Subtended angles
Abstract
Suppose that d ≥ 2 and m are fixed. For which n is it the case that any n angles can be realised by placing m points in Rd? A simple degrees of freedom argument shows that m points in R2 cannot realise more than 2m - 4 general angles. We give a construction to show that this bound is sharp when m ≥ 5. In d dimensions the degrees of freedom argument gives an upper bound of dm−(d+12) general angles. However, the above result does not generalise to this case; surprisingly, the bound of 2m-4 from two dimensions cannot be improved at all. Indeed, our main result is that there are sets of 2m - 3 angles that cannot be realised by m points in any dimension.
Publication Title
Israel Journal of Mathematics
Recommended Citation
Balister, P., Füredi, Z., Bollobás, B., Leader, I., & Walters, M. (2016). Subtended angles. Israel Journal of Mathematics, 214 (2), 995-1012. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11856-016-1370-1
