License: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license (CC BY 3.0)
When quoting this document, please refer to the following
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.SoCG.2019.56
URN: urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-104609
URL: http://dagstuhl.sunsite.rwth-aachen.de/volltexte/2019/10460/
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Schnider, Patrick

Ham-Sandwich Cuts and Center Transversals in Subspaces

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LIPIcs-SoCG-2019-56.pdf (0.5 MB)

Abstract

The Ham-Sandwich theorem is a well-known result in geometry. It states that any d mass distributions in R^d can be simultaneously bisected by a hyperplane. The result is tight, that is, there are examples of d+1 mass distributions that cannot be simultaneously bisected by a single hyperplane. In this abstract we will study the following question: given a continuous assignment of mass distributions to certain subsets of R^d, is there a subset on which we can bisect more masses than what is guaranteed by the Ham-Sandwich theorem?
We investigate two types of subsets. The first type are linear subspaces of R^d, i.e., k-dimensional flats containing the origin. We show that for any continuous assignment of d mass distributions to the k-dimensional linear subspaces of R^d, there is always a subspace on which we can simultaneously bisect the images of all d assignments. We extend this result to center transversals, a generalization of Ham-Sandwich cuts. As for Ham-Sandwich cuts, we further show that for d-k+2 masses, we can choose k-1 of the vectors defining the k-dimensional subspace in which the solution lies.
The second type of subsets we consider are subsets that are determined by families of n hyperplanes in R^d. Also in this case, we find a Ham-Sandwich-type result. In an attempt to solve a conjecture by Langerman about bisections with several cuts, we show that our underlying topological result can be used to prove this conjecture in a relaxed setting.

BibTeX - Entry

@InProceedings{schnider:LIPIcs:2019:10460,
  author =	{Patrick Schnider},
  title =	{{Ham-Sandwich Cuts and Center Transversals in Subspaces}},
  booktitle =	{35th International Symposium on Computational Geometry (SoCG 2019)},
  pages =	{56:1--56:15},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-104-7},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2019},
  volume =	{129},
  editor =	{Gill Barequet and Yusu Wang},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl--Leibniz-Zentrum fuer Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{http://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/volltexte/2019/10460},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-104609},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.SoCG.2019.56},
  annote =	{Keywords: Ham-Sandwich cuts, center transversal, topological methods}
}

Keywords: Ham-Sandwich cuts, center transversal, topological methods
Collection: 35th International Symposium on Computational Geometry (SoCG 2019)
Issue Date: 2019
Date of publication: 11.06.2019

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