English

Buffon Discrepancy and the Steinhaus Longimeter

Classical Analysis and ODEs 2026-03-31 v1 Combinatorics Metric Geometry

Abstract

Let ΩR2\Omega \subset \mathbb{R}^2 be a convex set. We study the problem of distributing a one-dimensional set SS with total length LL so that for any line \ell in R2\mathbb{R}^2 the number of intersections #(S)\#(\ell \cap S) is proportional to the length H1(Ω)\mathcal{H}^1(\ell \cap \Omega) as much as possible; we use the term Buffon discrepancy for the largest error. A construction of Steinhaus can be generalized to prove the existence of sets with Buffon discrepancy L1/3\lesssim L^{1/3}. We also show that the unit disk D\mathbb{D} admits a set with uniformly bounded Buffon discrepancy as LL \rightarrow \infty.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2603.27807,
  title  = {Buffon Discrepancy and the Steinhaus Longimeter},
  author = {Stefan Steinerberger},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2603.27807},
  year   = {2026}
}
R2 v1 2026-07-01T11:43:04.210Z