Related papers: Line transversals to disjoint balls
We prove Helly-type theorems for line transversals to disjoint unit balls in $\R^{d}$. In particular, we show that a family of $n \geq 2d$ disjoint unit balls in $\R^d$ has a line transversal if, for some ordering $\prec$ of the balls, any…
We completely describe the structure of the connected components of transversals to a collection of n line segments in R^3. We show that n>2 arbitrary line segments in R^3 admit 0, 1, ..., n or infinitely many line transversals. In the…
We prove that for any set $F$ of $n\ge 2$ pairwise disjoint open convex sets in $\mathbb{R}^3$, the connected components of the set of lines intersecting every member of $F$ are contractible. The same result holds for directed lines.
A line L is a transversal to a family F of convex objects in R^d if it intersects every member of F. In this paper we show that for every integer d>2 there exists a family of 2d-1 pairwise disjoint unit balls in R^d with the property that…
The aim of this note is to give an elementary proof of the following fact: given 3 red convex sets and 3 blue convex sets in $\mathbb{E}^3$, such that every red intersects every blue, there is a line transversal to the reds or there is a…
The 1913 Helly's theorem states that any family ${\cal K}$ of $n\geq d+1$ convex sets in ${\mathbb R}^d$ can be pierced by a single point if and only if any $d+1$ of ${\cal K}$'s elements can. In 2002 Alon, Kalai, Matou\v{s}ek and Meshulam…
For given finite system of convex polygons in the plane which have no transversal, find such homothety transformations of polygons (having fixed centres inside given polygons) with minimal similarity ratio c>1 that the transformed system…
There are sequences of directions such that, given any compact set K in R^n, the sequence of iterated Steiner symmetrals of K in these directions converges to a ball. However examples show that Steiner symmetrization along a sequence of…
A Helly-type theorem for diameter provides a bound on the diameter of the intersection of a finite family of convex sets in $\mathbb{R}^d$ given some information on the diameter of the intersection of all sufficiently small subfamilies. We…
We consider the following problem: Given a set $S$ of $n$ distinct points in the plane, how many edge-disjoint plane straight-line spanning paths can be drawn on $S$? Each spanning path must be crossing-free, but edges from different paths…
We investigate the lines tangent to four triangles in R^3. By a construction, there can be as many as 62 tangents. We show that there are at most 162 connected components of tangents, and at most 156 if the triangles are disjoint. In…
A linear ball is a simplicial complex whose geometric realization is homeomorphic to a ball and whose Stanley--Reisner ring has a linear resolution. It turns out that the Stanley--Reisner ring of the sphere which is the boundary complex of…
Given four congruent balls $A, B, C, D$ in $R^{d}$ that have disjoint interior and admit a line that intersects them in the order $ABCD$, we show that the distance between the centers of consecutive balls is smaller than the distance…
We consider the method of alternating projections for finding a point in the intersection of two closed sets, possibly nonconvex. Assuming only the standard transversality condition (or a weaker version thereof), we prove local linear…
We study versions of Helly's theorem that guarantee that the intersection of a family of convex sets in $R^d$ has a large diameter. This includes colourful, fractional and $(p,q)$ versions of Helly's theorem. In particular, the fractional…
Hadwiger's theorem is a Helly-type theorem involving common transversals to families of convex sets instead of common intersections. Subsequently, Pollack and Wenger identified a necessary and sufficient condition, called a consistent…
We first review some topics in the classical computational geometry of lines, in particular the O(n^{3+\epsilon}) bounds for the combinatorial complexity of the set of lines in R^3 interacting with $n$ objects of fixed description…
We prove the following variant of Helly's classical theorem for Hamming balls with a bounded radius. For $n>t$ and any (finite or infinite) set $X$, if in a family of Hamming balls of radius $t$ in $X^n$, every subfamily of at most…
High proved the following theorem. If the intersections of any two congruent copies of a plane convex body are centrally symmetric, then this body is a circle. In our paper we extend the theorem of High to spherical, Euclidean and…
We study the set of lines that meet a fixed line and are tangent to two spheres and classify the configurations consisting of a single line and three spheres for which there are infinitely many lines tangent to the three spheres that also…