English

On a conjecture of Erd\H{o}s and Szekeres

Combinatorics 2015-05-29 v1

Abstract

Let f(n) denote the smallest positive integer such that every set of f(n)f(n) points in general position in the Euclidean plane contains a convex n-gon. In a seminal paper published in 1935, Erd\H{o}s and Szekeres proved that f(n) exists and provided an upper bound. In 1961, they also proved a lower bound, which they conjectured is optimal. Their bounds are: 2n2+1f(n)(2n4n2)+12^{n-2}+1 \leq f(n) \leq {2n - 4 \choose n-2}+1. Since then, the upper bound has been improved by rougly a factor of 2, to f(n)(2n5n2)+1f(n) \leq {2n - 5 \choose n-2}+1. In the current paper, we further improve the upper bound by proving that: lim supnf(n)(2n5n2)2932 \limsup\limits_{n\rightarrow \infty} \frac{f(n)}{{2n-5 \choose n-2}} \leq \frac{29}{32}

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Cite

@article{arxiv.1505.07549,
  title  = {On a conjecture of Erd\H{o}s and Szekeres},
  author = {Georgios Vlachos},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1505.07549},
  year   = {2015}
}

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8 pages