English

On geodesic disks enclosing many points

Computational Geometry 2026-03-31 v2

Abstract

Let Π(n) \Pi(n) be the largest number such that for every set S S of n n points in a polygon~P P , there always exist two points x,yS x, y \in S , where every geodesic disk containing x x and y y contains Π(n) \Pi(n) points of~S S . We establish upper and lower bounds for Π(n) \Pi(n), and show that n5+1Π(n)n4+1 \left\lceil \frac{n}{5}\right\rceil+1 \leq \Pi(n) \leq \left\lceil \frac{n}{4} \right\rceil +1 . We also show that there always exist two points x,ySx, y\in S such that every geodesic disk with xx and yy on its boundary contains at least n7+37n13.1 \frac{n}{7+\sqrt{37}} \approx \left\lceil \frac{n}{13.1} \right\rceil points both inside and outside the disk. For the special case where the points of S S are restricted to be the vertices of a geodesically convex polygon we give a tight bound of n3+1\left\lceil \frac{n}{3} \right\rceil + 1. We provide the same tight bound when we only consider geodesic disks having x x and y y as diametral endpoints. We give upper and lower bounds of n5+1\left\lceil \frac{n}{5} \right\rceil + 1 and n6+26n11.1\frac{n}{6+\sqrt{26}} \approx \left\lceil \frac{n}{11.1} \right\rceil, respectively, for the two-colored version of the problem. Finally, for the two-colored variant we show that there always exist two points x,ySx, y\in S where xx and yy have different colors and every geodesic disk with xx and yy on its boundary contains at least n27.1+1\left\lceil \frac{n}{27.1}\right\rceil+1 points both inside and outside the disk.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2506.06477,
  title  = {On geodesic disks enclosing many points},
  author = {Prosenjit Bose and Guillermo Esteban and David Orden and Rodrigo Silveira and Tyler Tuttle},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2506.06477},
  year   = {2026}
}
R2 v1 2026-07-01T03:04:21.505Z