English

Asymptotics of $d$-Dimensional Visibility

Combinatorics 2019-09-17 v1

Abstract

We consider the space [0,n]3[0,n]^3, imagined as a three dimensional, axis-aligned grid world partitioned into n3n^3 1×1×11\times 1 \times 1 unit cubes. Each cube is either considered to be empty, in which case a line of sight can pass through it, or obstructing, in which case no line of sight can pass through it. From a given position, some of these obstructing cubes block one's view of other obstructing cubes, leading to the following extremal problem: What is the largest number of obstructing cubes that can be simultaneously visible from the surface of an observer cube, over all possible choices of which cubes of [0,n]3[0,n]^3 are obstructing? We construct an example of a configuration in which Ω(n83)\Omega\big(n^\frac{8}{3}\big) obstructing cubes are visible, and generalize this to an example with Ω(nd1d)\Omega\big(n^{d-\frac{1}{d}}\big) visible obstructing hypercubes for dimension d>3d>3. Using Fourier analytic techniques, we prove an O(nd1dlogn)O\big(n^{d-\frac{1}{d}}\log n\big) upper bound in a reduced visibility setting.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1909.07007,
  title  = {Asymptotics of $d$-Dimensional Visibility},
  author = {Ezra Erives and Srinivasan Sathiamurthy and Zarathustra Brady},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1909.07007},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

30 pages, 6 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-23T11:16:13.588Z