English

Polytopes with large transversal ratio

Combinatorics 2026-03-18 v1 Metric Geometry

Abstract

The transversal ratio of a polytope PP is the minimum proportion of vertices of PP required to intersect each facet of PP. The weak chromatic number of PP is the minimum number of colors required to color the vertices of PP so that no facet is monochromatic. We will construct an infinite family of dd-polytopes for each d5d\geq 5 whose transversal ratio approaches 1 as the number of vertices grows. In particular, this implies that the weak chromatic number for dd-polytopes is unbounded for each d5d\geq 5. The previous best known lower bounds on the supremum of the transversal ratio for dd-polytopes for d5d\geq 5 were 2/5 for odd dd by Novik and Zheng, and 1/2 for even dd by Holmsen, Pach, and Tverberg. In the case of simplicial (d1)(d-1)-spheres, the best known lower bounds were 1/2 for d=5d=5 and 6/116/11 for d=6d=6 by Novik and Zheng.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2603.16298,
  title  = {Polytopes with large transversal ratio},
  author = {Michael Gene Dobbins and Seunghun Lee},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2603.16298},
  year   = {2026}
}
R2 v1 2026-07-01T11:23:51.622Z