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arXiv · 2409.06472

Piercing intersecting convex sets

Imre Bárány·Travis Dillon·Dömötör Pálvölgyi·Dániel Varga
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Abstract

Assume two finite families $\mathcal A$ and $\mathcal B$ of convex sets in $\mathbb{R}^3$ have the property that $A\cap B\ne \emptyset$ for every $A \in \mathcal A$ and $B\in \mathcal B$. Is there a constant $\gamma >0$ (independent of $\mathcal A$ and $\mathcal B$) such that there is a line intersecting $\gamma|\mathcal A|$ sets in $\mathcal A$ or $\gamma|\mathcal B|$ sets in $\mathcal B$? This is an intriguing Helly-type question from a paper by Mart\'{i}nez, Roldan and Rubin. We confirm this in the special case when all sets in $\mathcal A$ lie in parallel planes and all sets in $\mathcal B$ lie in parallel planes; in fact, all sets from one of the two families has a line transversal.

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Imre Bárány, Travis Dillon, Dömötör Pálvölgyi, Dániel Varga. 2024-09-10. Piercing intersecting convex sets. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.laa.2025.02.007

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