Related papers: Minimal complete arcs in PG(2,q), q<= 32
We study arrangements of geodesic arcs on a sphere, where all arcs are internally disjoint and each arc has its endpoints located within the interior of other arcs. We establish fundamental results concerning the minimum number of arcs in…
A brick is a 3-connected graph such that the graph obtained from it by deleting any two distinct vertices has a perfect matching. A brick is minimal if for every edge e the deletion of e results in a graph that is not a brick. We prove a…
A small polygon is a polygon of unit diameter. The maximal width of an equilateral small polygon with $n=2^s$ vertices is not known when $s \ge 3$. This paper solves the first open case and finds the optimal equilateral small octagon. Its…
There is a sizable literature on investigating the minimum and maximum numbers of cycles in a class of graphs. However, the answer is known only for special classes. This paper presents a result on the smallest number of cycles in…
What is the smallest size of a family of subsets of $[n]$ such that it does not contain an induced copy of $Q_2$ as a poset (known as the \textit{diamond}), but adding a new set creates such a copy? It is easy to see that a maximal chain…
The smallest set Q of vertices of a graph G, such that every path on 3 vertices, has at least one vertex in Q, is a minimum 3-covering of G. By attaching loops of weight 1 to the vertices of G we can find the eigenvalues associated with G,…
We say that $G$ is a $(3, 3)$-Ramsey graph if every $2$-coloring of the edges of $G$ forces a monochromatic triangle. The $(3, 3)$-Ramsey graph $G$ is minimal if $G$ does not contain a proper $(3, 3)$-Ramsey subgraph. In this work we find…
A basis of the ideal of the complement of a linear subspace in a projective space over a finite field is given. As an application, the second largest number of points of plane curves of degree $d$ over the finite field of $q$ elements is…
We prove that the ring of integers in the totally real cubic subfield $K^{(49)}$ of the cyclotomic field $\mathbb{Q}(\zeta_7)$ has Pythagoras number equal to $4$. This is the smallest possible value for a totally real number field of odd…
We study a polyhedron with $n$ vertices of fixed volume having minimum surface area. Completing the proof of Fejes Toth, we show that all faces of a minimum polyhedron are triangles, and further prove that a minimum polyhedron does not…
In this paper we consider binary linear codes spanned by incidence matrices of Steiner 2-designs associated with maximal arcs in projective planes of even order, and their dual codes. Upper and lower bounds on the 2-rank of the incidence…
We show that the size of a minimal simplicial cover of a polytope $P$ is a lower bound for the size of a minimal triangulation of $P$, including ones with extra vertices. We then use this fact to study minimal triangulations of cubes, and…
In this short note, we construct a minimally intersecting pair of simple closed curves that fill a genus 2 surface with an odd, greater than 3, number of punctures. This finishes the determination of minimally intersecting filling pairs for…
The height of an algebraic number $\alpha$ is a measure of how arithmetically complicated $\alpha$ is. We say $\alpha$ is totally $p$-adic if the minimal polynomial of $\alpha$ splits completely over the field $\mathbb{Q}_p$ of $p$-adic…
Let p be a puncture of a punctured sphere, and let Q be the set of all other punctures. We prove that the maximal cardinality of a set of arcs pairwise intersecting at most once, which start at p and end in Q, is |X|(|X| + 1). We deduce…
A {\em maximal partial ovoid} of a generalized quadrangle is a maximal set of points no two of which are collinear. The problem of determining the smallest size of a maximal partial ovoid in quadrangles has been extensively studied in the…
A graph is hypohamiltonian if it is not Hamiltonian, but the deletion of any single vertex gives a Hamiltonian graph. Until now, the smallest known planar hypohamiltonian graph had 42 vertices, a result due to Araya and Wiener. That result…
Given two positive integers $M$ and $k$, let $\B_k$ be the set of bases $q>1$ such that there exists a real number $x$ having exactly $k$ different $q$-expansions over the alphabet $\{0,1,\cdots,M\}$. In this paper we investigate the…
A bisection of a graph is a bipartition of its vertex set such that the two resulting parts differ in size by at most 1, and its size is the number of edges that connect vertices in the two parts. The perfect matching condition and…
A filling pair $(\alpha, \beta)$ of a surface $S_g$ is a pair of simple closed curves in minimal position such that the complement of $\alpha\cup\beta$ in $S_g$ is a disjoint union of topological disks. A filling pair is said to be…