English

Well-distributed great circles on S^2

Metric Geometry 2016-07-14 v1 Combinatorics

Abstract

Let C1,,CnC_1, \dots, C_n denote the 1/n1/n-neighborhood of nn great circles on S2\mathbb{S}^2. We are interested in how much these areas have to overlap and prove the sharp bounds i,j=1ijnCiCjss{n22s\mboxif 0s<2n2logn\mboxif s=2n13s/2\mboxif s>2.. \sum_{i, j = 1 \atop i \neq j}^{n}{|C_i \cap C_j|^s} \gtrsim_s \begin{cases} n^{2 - 2s} \qquad &\mbox{if}~0 \leq s < 2 \\ n^{-2} \log{n} \qquad &\mbox{if}~s = 2\\ n^{1- 3s/2} \qquad &\mbox{if}~s > 2. \end{cases} . For s=1s=1 there are arrangements for which the sum of mutual overlap is uniformly bounded (for the analogous problem in R2\mathbb{R}^2 the lower bound is logn\gtrsim \log{n}) and there are strong connections to minimal energy configurations of nn charged electrons on S2\mathbb{S}^2 (the J. J. Thomson problem).

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1607.03805,
  title  = {Well-distributed great circles on S^2},
  author = {Stefan Steinerberger},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1607.03805},
  year   = {2016}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-22T14:53:42.615Z