arXiv subjects

Mark Walters

Publications and source records attributed to Mark Walters.

23 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2010

Transitive Sets in Euclidean Ramsey Theory

A finite set $X$ in some Euclidean space $R^n$ is called Ramsey if for any $k$ there is a $d$ such that whenever $R^d$ is $k$-coloured it contains a monochromatic set congruent to $X$. This notion was introduced by Erdos, Graham, Montgomery, Rothschild, Spencer and Straus, who asked if a set is Ramsey if and only if it is spherical, meaning that it lies on the surface of a sphere. This question (made into a conjecture by Graham) has dominated subsequent work in Euclidean Ramsey theory. In this paper we introduce a new conjecture regarding which sets are Ramsey; this is the first ever `rival' conjecture to the conjecture above. Calling a finite set transitive if its symmetry group acts transitively---in other words, if all points of the set look the same---our conjecture is that the Ramsey sets are precisely the transitive sets, together with their subsets. One appealing feature of this conjecture is that it reduces (in one direction) to a purely combinatorial statement. We give this statement as well as several other related conjectures. We also prove the first non-trivial cases of the statement. Curiously, it is far from obvious that our new conjecture is genuinely different from the old. We show that they are indeed different by proving that not every spherical set embeds in a transitive set. This result may be of independent interest.

math.CO↗

arXiv2008

Iterated Point-Line Configurations Grow Doubly-Exponentially

Begin with a set of four points in the real plane in general position. Add to this collection the intersection of all lines through pairs of these points. Iterate. Ismailescu and Radoičić (2003) showed that the limiting set is dense in the plane. We give doubly exponential upper and lower bounds on the number of points at each stage. The proof employs a variant of the Szemerédi-Trotter Theorem and an analysis of the ``minimum degree'' of the growing configuration.

math.CO↗

arXiv2007

A critical constant for the k nearest neighbour model

Let P be a Poisson process of intensity one in a square S_n of area n. For a fixed integer k, join every point of P to its k nearest neighbours, creating an undirected random geometric graph G_{n,k}. We prove that there exists a critical constant c such that for c' c G_{n,c'\log n} is connected with probability tending to 1 as n tends to infinity. This answers a question previously posed by the authors.

math.PR↗

arXiv2007

Rigorous confidence intervals for critical probabilities

We use the method of Balister, Bollobas and Walters to give rigorous 99.9999% confidence intervals for the critical probabilities for site and bond percolation on the 11 Archimedean lattices. In our computer calculations, the emphasis is on simplicity and ease of verification, rather than obtaining the best possible results. Nevertheless, we obtain intervals of width at most 0.0005 in all cases.

math.PR↗

arXiv2005

Continuum percolation with steps in an annulus

Let A be the annulus in R^2 centered at the origin with inner and outer radii r(1-ε) and r, respectively. Place points {x_i} in R^2 according to a Poisson process with intensity 1 and let G_A be the random graph with vertex set {x_i} and edges x_ix_j whenever x_i-x_j\in A. We show that if the area of A is large, then G_A almost surely has an infinite component. Moreover, if we fix ε, increase r and let n_c=n_c(ε) be the area of A when this infinite component appears, then n_c\to1 as ε\to 0. This is in contrast to the case of a ``square'' annulus where we show that n_c is bounded away from 1.

math.PR↗