English

Pach's animal problem within the bounding box

Combinatorics 2024-02-29 v1

Abstract

A collection of unit cubes with integer coordinates in R3\mathbb R^3 is an animal if its union is homeomorphic to the 3-ball. Pach's animal problem asks whether any animal can be transformed to a single cube by adding or removing cubes one by one in such a way that any intermediate step is an animal as well. Here we provide an example of an animal that cannot be transformed to a single cube this way within its bounding box.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2402.18212,
  title  = {Pach's animal problem within the bounding box},
  author = {Martin Tancer},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2402.18212},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

20 pages, 19 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-28T15:03:04.355Z