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Main Authors: Balla, Igor, Filakovský, Marek, Kielak, Bartłomiej, Kráľ, Daniel, Schlomberg, Niklas
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.18002
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author Balla, Igor
Filakovský, Marek
Kielak, Bartłomiej
Kráľ, Daniel
Schlomberg, Niklas
author_facet Balla, Igor
Filakovský, Marek
Kielak, Bartłomiej
Kráľ, Daniel
Schlomberg, Niklas
contents Aougab and Gaster [Math. Proc. Cambridge Philos. Soc. 174 (2023), 569-584] proved that any set of simple closed curves on the torus, where any two are non-homotopic and intersect at most k times, has a maximum size of $k+O(\sqrt{k}\log k)$. We determine the maximum size of such a set for every k. In particular, the maximum never exceeds k+6, and it does not exceed k+4 when k is large. As this quantity coincides with the maximal number of columns of a generic k-modular matrix with two rows, our result also settles the column number problem, a problem of interest in combinatorial optimization, for such matrices.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2412_18002
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Curves on the torus with few intersections
Balla, Igor
Filakovský, Marek
Kielak, Bartłomiej
Kráľ, Daniel
Schlomberg, Niklas
Combinatorics
Geometric Topology
57K20, 52A38, 90C05
Aougab and Gaster [Math. Proc. Cambridge Philos. Soc. 174 (2023), 569-584] proved that any set of simple closed curves on the torus, where any two are non-homotopic and intersect at most k times, has a maximum size of $k+O(\sqrt{k}\log k)$. We determine the maximum size of such a set for every k. In particular, the maximum never exceeds k+6, and it does not exceed k+4 when k is large. As this quantity coincides with the maximal number of columns of a generic k-modular matrix with two rows, our result also settles the column number problem, a problem of interest in combinatorial optimization, for such matrices.
title Curves on the torus with few intersections
topic Combinatorics
Geometric Topology
57K20, 52A38, 90C05
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.18002