$(n,m)$-Fold Covers of Spheres

TL;DR

This paper investigates the minimal number of open sets needed to cover a sphere multiple times without antipodal pairs, providing bounds based on the sphere's dimension and coverage multiplicity.

Contribution

It establishes new bounds on the number of sets required for multiple coverings of spheres with antipodal constraints, extending classical Borsuk-Ulam related results.

Findings

Lower and upper bounds for open covers with multiple coverings

Exact number of sets needed for specific coverage scenarios

Existence of points with high coverage in multiple covers

Abstract

A well known consequence of the Borsuk-Ulam theorem is that if the $d$-dimensional sphere $S^d$ is covered with less than $d+2$ open sets, then there is a set containing a pair of antipodal points. In this paper we provide lower and upper bounds on the minimum number of open sets, not containing a pair of antipodal points, needed to cover the $d$-dimensional sphere $n$ times, with the additional property that the northern hemisphere is covered $m > n$ times. We prove that if the open northern hemisphere is to be covered $m$ times then at least $ \lceil \frac{d-1}{2} \rceil+n+m$ and at most $d+n+m$ sets are needed. For the case of $n=1$ and $d \ge 2$, this number is equal to $d+2$ if $m \le \lfloor \frac{d}{2} \rfloor + 1$ and equal to $ \lfloor \frac{d-1}{2} \rfloor + 2 +m$ if $m > \lfloor \frac{d}{2} \rfloor + 1$. If the closed northern hemisphere is to be covered $m$ times then $d+2m-1$ sets are needed, this number is also sufficient. We also present results on a related problem of independent interest. We prove that if $S^d$ is covered $n$ times with open sets, not containing a pair of antipodal points, then there exists a point that is covered at least $ \lceil \frac{d}{2} \rceil +n$ times. Furthermore, we show that there are covers in which no point is covered more than $n+d$ times.