On geodesic disks enclosing many points

TL;DR

This paper investigates bounds on the number of points enclosed by geodesic disks determined by pairs of points in various configurations, providing tight bounds for special cases and variants.

Contribution

It establishes new bounds for the maximum number of points enclosed by geodesic disks with pairs of points on their boundary, including special and two-colored variants.

Findings

Bounds for general point sets: eil;n/5 and eil;n/4+1.

Tight bounds for points on geodesically convex polygons: eil;n/3+1.

Bounds for two-colored variants: eil;n/5+1 and eil;n/11.1.

Abstract

Let $ \Pi(n) $ be the largest number such that for every set $ S $ of $ n $ points in a polygon~$ P $, there always exist two points $ x, y \in S $, where every geodesic disk containing $ x $ and $ y $ contains $ \Pi(n) $ points of~$ S $. We establish upper and lower bounds for $ \Pi(n)$, and show that $ \left\lceil \frac{n}{5}\right\rceil+1 \leq \Pi(n) \leq \left\lceil \frac{n}{4} \right\rceil +1 $. We also show that there always exist two points $x, y\in S$ such that every geodesic disk with $x$ and $y$ on its boundary contains at least $ \frac{n}{7+\sqrt{37}} \approx \left\lceil \frac{n}{13.1} \right\rceil$ points both inside and outside the disk. For the special case where the points of $ S $ are restricted to be the vertices of a geodesically convex polygon we give a tight bound of $\left\lceil \frac{n}{3} \right\rceil + 1$. We provide the same tight bound when we only consider geodesic disks having $ x $ and $ y $ as diametral endpoints. We give upper and lower bounds of $\left\lceil \frac{n}{5} \right\rceil + 1 $ and $\frac{n}{6+\sqrt{26}} \approx \left\lceil \frac{n}{11.1} \right\rceil$, respectively, for the two-colored version of the problem. Finally, for the two-colored variant we show that there always exist two points $x, y\in S$ where $x$ and $y$ have different colors and every geodesic disk with $x$ and $y$ on its boundary contains at least $\left\lceil \frac{n}{27.1}\right\rceil+1$ points both inside and outside the disk.