Discrepancy of Arithmetic Progressions in Boxes and Convex Bodies

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Li, Lily, Nikolov, Aleksandar
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Li, Lily
Nikolov, Aleksandar
author_facet Li, Lily
Nikolov, Aleksandar
contents The combinatorial discrepancy of arithmetic progressions inside $[N] := \{1, \ldots, N\}$ is the smallest integer $D$ for which $[N]$ can be colored with two colors so that any arithmetic progression in $[N]$ contains at most $D$ more elements from one color class than the other. Bounding the discrepancy of such set systems is a classical problem in discrepancy theory. More recently, this problem was generalized to arithmetic progressions in grids like $[N]^d$ (Valk{ó}) and $[N_1]\times \ldots \times [N_d]$ (Fox, Xu, and Zhou). In the latter setting, Fox, Xu, and Zhou gave upper and lower bounds on the discrepancy that match within a $\frac{\log |Ω|}{\log \log |Ω|}$ factor, where $Ω:= [N_1]\times \ldots \times [N_d]$ is the ground set. In this work, we use the connection between factorization norms and discrepancy to improve their upper bound to be within a $\sqrt{\log|Ω|}$ factor from the lower bound. We also generalize Fox, Xu, and Zhou's lower bound, and our upper bounds to arithmetic progressions in arbitrary convex bodies.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2504_12598
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Discrepancy of Arithmetic Progressions in Boxes and Convex Bodies
Li, Lily
Nikolov, Aleksandar
Combinatorics
Discrete Mathematics
11K38 (Primary) 11B25 (Secondary)
The combinatorial discrepancy of arithmetic progressions inside $[N] := \{1, \ldots, N\}$ is the smallest integer $D$ for which $[N]$ can be colored with two colors so that any arithmetic progression in $[N]$ contains at most $D$ more elements from one color class than the other. Bounding the discrepancy of such set systems is a classical problem in discrepancy theory. More recently, this problem was generalized to arithmetic progressions in grids like $[N]^d$ (Valk{ó}) and $[N_1]\times \ldots \times [N_d]$ (Fox, Xu, and Zhou). In the latter setting, Fox, Xu, and Zhou gave upper and lower bounds on the discrepancy that match within a $\frac{\log |Ω|}{\log \log |Ω|}$ factor, where $Ω:= [N_1]\times \ldots \times [N_d]$ is the ground set. In this work, we use the connection between factorization norms and discrepancy to improve their upper bound to be within a $\sqrt{\log|Ω|}$ factor from the lower bound. We also generalize Fox, Xu, and Zhou's lower bound, and our upper bounds to arithmetic progressions in arbitrary convex bodies.
title Discrepancy of Arithmetic Progressions in Boxes and Convex Bodies
topic Combinatorics
Discrete Mathematics
11K38 (Primary) 11B25 (Secondary)
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.12598