English

Transversals to colorful intersecting convex sets

Combinatorics 2023-06-21 v2

Abstract

Let KK be a compact convex set in R2\mathbb{R}^2 and let F1,F2,F3\mathcal{F}_1, \mathcal{F}_2, \mathcal{F}_3 be finite families of translates of KK such that ABA \cap B \neq \emptyset for every AFiA \in \mathcal{F}_i and BFjB \in \mathcal{F}_j with iji \neq j. A conjecture by Dolnikov is that, under these conditions, there is always some j{1,2,3}j \in \lbrace 1,2,3 \rbrace such that Fj\mathcal{F}_j can be pierced by 33 points. In this paper we prove a stronger version of this conjecture when KK is a body of constant width or when it is close in Banach-Mazur distance to a disk. We also show that the conjecture is true with 88 piercing points instead of 33. Along the way we prove more general statements both in the plane and in higher dimensions. A related result was given by Mart\'inez-Sandoval, Rold\'an-Pensado and Rubin. They showed that if F1,,Fd\mathcal{F}_1, \dots, \mathcal{F}_d are finite families of convex sets in Rd\mathbb{R}^d such that for every choice of sets C1F1,,CdFdC_1 \in \mathcal{F}_1, \dots, C_d \in \mathcal{F}_d the intersection i=1dCi\bigcap_{i=1}^{d} C_i is non-empty, then either there exists j{1,2,,n}j \in \lbrace 1,2, \dots, n \rbrace such that Fj\mathcal{F}_j can be pierced by few points or i=1nFi\bigcup_{i=1}^{n} \mathcal{F}_i can be crossed by few lines. We give optimal values for the number of piercing points and crossing lines needed when d=2d=2 and also consider the problem restricted to special families of convex sets.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2305.16760,
  title  = {Transversals to colorful intersecting convex sets},
  author = {Cuauhtemoc Gomez-Navarro and Edgardo Roldán-Pensado},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2305.16760},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

14 pages, 9 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-28T10:47:19.294Z