Polytopes with large transversal ratio
Abstract
The transversal ratio of a polytope is the minimum proportion of vertices of required to intersect each facet of . The weak chromatic number of is the minimum number of colors required to color the vertices of so that no facet is monochromatic. We will construct an infinite family of -polytopes for each whose transversal ratio approaches 1 as the number of vertices grows. In particular, this implies that the weak chromatic number for -polytopes is unbounded for each . The previous best known lower bounds on the supremum of the transversal ratio for -polytopes for were 2/5 for odd by Novik and Zheng, and 1/2 for even by Holmsen, Pach, and Tverberg. In the case of simplicial -spheres, the best known lower bounds were 1/2 for and for by Novik and Zheng.
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}
}