Related papers: New lower bounds for $t$-coverings

As part of the graph minor project, Robertson and Seymour showed in 1990 that the class of graphs that can be embedded in a given surface can be characterized by a finite set of minimal excluded minors. However, their proof, because…

Blocking sets and minimal codes have been studied for many years in projective geometry and coding theory. In this paper, we provide a new lower bound on the size of $t$-fold $s$-blocking sets without the condition $t \leq q$, which is…

We improve Larman's bound on the diameter of a polytope by showing that if $\Delta$ is a normal simplicial complex, all of whose missing faces have size at most $r$, then the diameter of the facet-ridge graph of $\Delta$ is not larger than…

We prove that 3-query linear locally correctable codes over the Reals of dimension $d$ require block length $n>d^{2+\lambda}$ for some fixed, positive $\lambda >0$. Geometrically, this means that if $n$ vectors in $R^d$ are such that each…

A classic theorem in combinatorial design theory is Fisher's inequality, which states that a family $\mathcal F$ of subsets of $[n]$ with all pairwise intersections of size $\lambda$ can have at most $n$ non-empty sets. One may weaken the…

We prove a new lower bound for the almost 20 year old problem of determining the smallest possible size of an essential cover of the $n$-dimensional hypercube $\{\pm 1\}^n$, i.e. the smallest possible size of a collection of hyperplanes…

The length function $\ell_2(r,R)$ is the smallest length of a binary linear code with codimension (redundancy) $r$ and covering radius $R$. We obtain the following new upper bounds on $\ell_2(r,R)$, which yield a decrease $\Delta(r,R)$…

In Part I of this article we generalize the Linearized Doubling (LD) approach, introduced in earlier work by NK, by proving a general theorem stating that if $\Sigma$ is a closed minimal surface embedded in a Riemannian three-manifold…

Consider a $q$-ary block code satisfying the property that no $l$-letters long codeword's prefix occurs as a suffix of any codeword for $l$ inside some interval. We determine a general upper bound on the maximum size of these codes and a…

In 1967, Gr\"unbaum conjectured that any $d$-dimensional polytope with $d+s\leq 2d$ vertices has at least \[\phi_k(d+s,d) = {d+1 \choose k+1 }+{d \choose k+1 }-{d+1-s \choose k+1 } \] $k$-faces. We prove this conjecture and also…

We discuss two generalizations of the collar lemma. The first is the stable neighborhood theorem which says that a (not necessarily simple) closed geodesic in a hyperbolic surface has a \lq\lq stable neighborhood\rq\rq whose width only…

A $q$-ary $t$-covering array is an $m \times n$ matrix with entries from $\{0, 1, ..., q-1\}$ with the property that for any $t$ column positions, all $q^t$ possible vectors of length $t$ occur at least once. One wishes to minimize $m$ for…

The purpose of this article is three-fold. First, we apply a general theorem from our earlier work to produce many new minimal doublings of the Clifford Torus in the round three-sphere. This construction generalizes and unifies prior…

Balanced incomplete block designs (BIBDs) are a class of designs with v treatments and b blocks of size k that are optimal with regards to a wide range of optimality criteria, but it is not clear which designs to choose for combinations of…

We solve the existence problem for $F$-designs for arbitrary $r$-uniform hypergraphs~$F$. This implies that given any $r$-uniform hypergraph~$F$, the trivially necessary divisibility conditions are sufficient to guarantee a decomposition of…

We prove the existence of subspace designs with any given parameters, provided that the dimension of the underlying space is sufficiently large in terms of the other parameters of the design and satisfies the obvious necessary divisibility…

We establish a lower bound theorem for the number of $k$-faces ($1\le k\le d-2$) in a $d$-dimensional polytope $P$ (abbreviated as a $d$-polytope) with $2d+2$ vertices, extending the previously known case for $k=1$. We identify all…

A central problem in discrete geometry, known as Hadwiger's covering problem, asks what the smallest natural number $N\left(n\right)$ is such that every convex body in ${\mathbb R}^{n}$ can be covered by a union of the interiors of at most…

In 1951, Bang posed the affine plank conjecture, which remains open: If a convex body in $\mathbb{R}^d$ is covered by planks, then the total relative width of the planks is at least one. We prove a lower bound of $2/(1+\sqrt{d})$ for this…

Let $k$ and $\ell$ be positive integers. A cycle with two blocks $C(k,\ell)$ is a digraph consisting of two internally vertex disjoint directed paths of lengths $k$ and $\ell$ with the same initial vertex and terminal vertex.…