English

The hamburger theorem

Metric Geometry 2018-12-18 v4 Combinatorics

Abstract

We generalize the ham sandwich theorem to d+1d+1 measures in Rd\mathbb{R}^d as follows. Let μ1,μ2,,μd+1\mu_1,\mu_2, \dots, \mu_{d+1} be absolutely continuous finite Borel measures on Rd\mathbb{R}^d. Let ωi=μi(Rd)\omega_i=\mu_i(\mathbb{R}^d) for i[d+1]i\in [d+1], ω=min{ωi;i[d+1]}\omega=\min\{\omega_i; i\in [d+1]\} and assume that j=1d+1ωj=1\sum_{j=1}^{d+1} \omega_j=1. Assume that ωi1/d\omega_i \le 1/d for every i[d+1]i\in[d+1]. Then there exists a hyperplane hh such that each open halfspace HH defined by hh satisfies μi(H)(j=1d+1μj(H))/d\mu_i(H) \le (\sum_{j=1}^{d+1} \mu_j(H))/d for every i[d+1]i \in [d+1] and j=1d+1μj(H)min(1/2,1dω)1/(d+1)\sum_{j=1}^{d+1} \mu_j(H) \ge \min(1/2, 1-d\omega) \ge 1/(d+1). As a consequence we obtain that every (d+1)(d+1)-colored set of ndnd points in Rd\mathbb{R}^d such that no color is used for more than nn points can be partitioned into nn disjoint rainbow (d1)(d-1)-dimensional simplices.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1503.06856,
  title  = {The hamburger theorem},
  author = {Mikio Kano and Jan Kynčl},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1503.06856},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

11 pages, 2 figures; a new proof of Theorem 8, extended concluding remarks

R2 v1 2026-06-22T09:00:10.333Z