English

The structure of Lonely Runner spectra

Combinatorics 2026-01-14 v4 Number Theory

Abstract

For each subtorus TT of (R/Z)n(\mathbb{R}/\mathbb{Z})^n, let D(T)D(T) denote the (infimal) LL^\infty-distance from TT to the point (1/2,,1/2)(1/2,\ldots, 1/2). The nn-th Lonely Runner spectrum S(n)\mathcal{S}(n) is defined to be the set of all values achieved by D(T)D(T) as TT ranges over the 11-dimensional subtori of (R/Z)n(\mathbb{R}/\mathbb{Z})^n that are not contained in the coordinate hyperplanes. The Lonely Runner Conjecture predicts that S(n)[0,1/21/(n+1)]\mathcal{S}(n) \subseteq [0,1/2-1/(n+1)]. Rather than attack this conjecture, we study the structure of the sets S(n)\mathcal{S}(n). The main purpose of this note is to show that the set of accumulation points of S(n)\mathcal{S}(n) is precisely S(n1)\mathcal{S}(n-1).

Cite

@article{arxiv.2304.01462,
  title  = {The structure of Lonely Runner spectra},
  author = {Vikram Giri and Noah Kravitz},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2304.01462},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

Fixed error from previous version

R2 v1 2026-06-28T09:48:07.455Z