English

The Hadwiger-Nelson problem with two forbidden distances

Combinatorics 2018-05-17 v1

Abstract

In 1950 Edward Nelson asked the following simple-sounding question: \emph{How many colors are needed to color the Euclidean plane E2\mathbb{E}^2 such that no two points distance 11 apart are identically colored?} We say that 11 is a \emph{forbidden} distance. For many years, we only knew that the answer was 44, 55, 66, or 77. In a recent breakthrough, de Grey \cite{degrey} proved that at least five colors are necessary. In this paper we consider a related problem in which we require \emph{two} forbidden distances, 11 and dd. In other words, for a given positive number d1d\neq 1, how many colors are needed to color the plane such that no two points distance 11 \underline{or} dd apart are assigned the same color? We find several values of dd, for which the answer to the previous question is at least 55. These results and graphs may be useful in constructing simpler 55-chromatic unit distance graphs.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1805.06055,
  title  = {The Hadwiger-Nelson problem with two forbidden distances},
  author = {Geoffrey Exoo and Dan Ismailescu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1805.06055},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

17 pages, 11 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-23T01:56:47.888Z