English

Triangles capturing many lattice points

Combinatorics 2018-05-02 v4 Number Theory

Abstract

We study a combinatorial problem that recently arose in the context of shape optimization: among all triangles with vertices (0,0)(0,0), (x,0)(x,0), and (0,y)(0,y) and fixed area, which one encloses the most lattice points from Z>02\mathbb{Z}_{>0}^2? Moreover, does its shape necessarily converge to the isosceles triangle (x=y)(x=y) as the area becomes large? Laugesen and Liu suggested that, in contrast to similar problems, there might not be a limiting shape. We prove that the limiting set is indeed nontrivial and contains infinitely many elements. We also show that there exist `bad' areas where no triangle is particularly good at capturing lattice points and show that there exists an infinite set of slopes y/xy/x such that any associated triangle captures more lattice points than any other fixed triangle for infinitely many (and arbitrarily large) areas; this set of slopes is a fractal subset of [1/3,3][1/3, 3] and has Minkowski dimension at most 3/43/4.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1706.04170,
  title  = {Triangles capturing many lattice points},
  author = {Nicholas F. Marshall and Stefan Steinerberger},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1706.04170},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

23 pages, 9 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-22T20:17:48.979Z