Related papers: Where have all the grasshoppers gone?

A plank is the part of space between two parallel planes. The following open problem, posed 45 years ago, can be viwed as the converse of Tarski's plank problem (Bang's theorem): Is it true that if the total width of a collection of planks…

Suppose that each proper subset of a set $S$ of points in a vector space is contained in the union of planes of specified dimensions, but $S$ itself is not contained in any such union. How large can $|S|$ be? We prove a general upper bound…

Let $G$ be a graph. Assume that to each vertex of a set of vertices $S\subseteq V(G)$ a robot is assigned. At each stage one robot can move to a neighbouring vertex. Then $S$ is a mobile general position set of $G$ if there exists a…

In a graph $G$, a geodesic between two vertices $x$ and $y$ is a shortest path connecting $x$ to $y$. A subset $S$ of the vertices of $G$ is in general position if no vertex of $S$ lies on any geodesic between two other vertices of $S$. The…

Given a finite set satisfying condition $\mathcal{A}$, the subset selection problem asks, how large of a subset satisfying condition $\mathcal{B}$ can we find? We make progress on three instances of subset selection problems in planar point…

The planar grasshopper problem, originally introduced in (Goulko & Kent 2017 Proc. R. Soc. A 473, 20170494), is a striking example of a model with long-range isotropic interactions whose ground states break rotational symmetry. In this work…

For a finite set $P$ of points in the plane in general position, a \emph{crossing family} of size $k$ in $P$ is a collection of $k$ line segments with endpoints in $P$ that are pairwise crossing. It is a long-standing open problem to…

Chv\'{a}tal and Klincsek (1980) gave an $O(n^3)$-time algorithm for the problem of finding a maximum-cardinality convex subset of an arbitrary given set $P$ of $n$ points in the plane. This paper examines a generalization of the problem,…

We generalize the Guth--Katz joints theorem from lines to varieties. A special case says that $N$ planes (2-flats) in 6 dimensions (over any field) have $O(N^{3/2})$ joints, where a joint is a point contained in a triple of these planes not…

The study of the movement of flocks, whether biological or technological is motivated by the desire to understand the capability of coherent motion of a large number of agents that only receive very limited information. In a biological…

Given a set of points in the plane, the \textsc{General Position Subset Selection} problem is that of finding a maximum-size subset of points in general position, i.e., with no three points collinear. The problem is known to be ${\rm…

Tracking of moving objects is crucial to security systems and networks. Given a graph $G$, terminal vertices $s$ and $t$, and an integer $k$, the \textsc{Tracking Paths} problem asks whether there exists at most $k$ vertices, which if…

Given $2k-1$ convex sets in $R^2$ such that no point of the plane is covered by more than $k$ of the sets, is it true that there are two among the convex sets whose union contains all $k$-covered points of the plane? This question due to…

An overview is presented of recent work on some statistical problems on multiparticle random walks. We consider a Euclidean, deterministic fractal or disordered lattice and N >> 1 independent random walkers initially (t=0) placed onto the…

The spherical grasshopper problem is a geometric optimization problem that arises in the context of Bell inequalities and can be interpreted as identifying the best local hidden variable approximation to quantum singlet correlations for…

Say that a subset S of the plane is a "circle-center set" if S is not a subset of a line, and whenever we choose three noncollinear points from S, the center of the unique circle through those three points is also an element of S. A problem…

Let $P$ be a set of $n$ points in the plane in general position. We show that at least $\lfloor n/3\rfloor$ plane spanning trees can be packed into the complete geometric graph on $P$. This improves the previous best known lower bound…

Let $p$ and $q$ be positive integers. The $(p, q)$-leaper $L$ is a generalised knight which leaps $p$ units away along one coordinate axis and $q$ units away along the other. Consider a free $L$, meaning that $p + q$ is odd and $p$ and $q$…

Let $S$ be a planar point set in general position, and let $\mathcal{P}(S)$ be the set of all plane straight-line paths with vertex set $S$. A flip on a path $P \in \mathcal{P}(S)$ is the operation of replacing an edge $e$ of $P$ with…

Given two positive real numbers $M$ and $m$ and an integer $n>2$, it is well known that we can find a family of solutions of the $(n+1)$-body problem where the body with mass $M$ stays put at the origin and the other $n$ bodies, all with…