The Hadwiger-Nelson problem with two forbidden distances
Abstract
In 1950 Edward Nelson asked the following simple-sounding question: \emph{How many colors are needed to color the Euclidean plane such that no two points distance apart are identically colored?} We say that is a \emph{forbidden} distance. For many years, we only knew that the answer was , , , or . 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, and . In other words, for a given positive number , how many colors are needed to color the plane such that no two points distance \underline{or} apart are assigned the same color? We find several values of , for which the answer to the previous question is at least . These results and graphs may be useful in constructing simpler -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