English

On the minimum diameter of plane integral point sets

Combinatorics 2008-04-09 v1

Abstract

Since ancient times mathematicians consider geometrical objects with integral side lengths. We consider plane integral point sets P\mathcal{P}, which are sets of nn points in the plane with pairwise integral distances where not all the points are collinear. The largest occurring distance is called its diameter. Naturally the question about the minimum possible diameter d(2,n)d(2,n) of a plane integral point set consisting of nn points arises. We give some new exact values and describe state-of-the-art algorithms to obtain them. It turns out that plane integral point sets with minimum diameter consist very likely of subsets with many collinear points. For this special kind of point sets we prove a lower bound for d(2,n)d(2,n) achieving the known upper bound nc2loglognn^{c_2\log\log n} up to a constant in the exponent. A famous question of Erd\H{o}s asks for plane integral point sets with no 3 points on a line and no 4 points on a circle. Here, we talk of point sets in general position and denote the corresponding minimum diameter by d˙(2,n)\dot{d}(2,n). Recently d˙(2,7)=22270\dot{d}(2,7)=22 270 could be determined via an exhaustive search.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0804.1307,
  title  = {On the minimum diameter of plane integral point sets},
  author = {Sascha Kurz and Alfred Wassermann},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0804.1307},
  year   = {2008}
}

Comments

12 pages, 5 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-21T10:28:53.807Z