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Erdős Problem 1121

References:

    erdosproblems.com/1121

    [BeLi16] Bezdek, Károly and Litvak, Alexander E., Packing convex bodies by cylinders. Discrete Comput. Geom. (2016), 725-738.

    [GoGo45] Goodman, A. W. and Goodman, R. E., A circle covering theorem. Amer. Math. Monthly (1945), 494-498.

    [Ha47] Hadwiger, H., Nonseparable convex systems. Amer. Math. Monthly (1947), 583-585.

namespace Erdos1121open scoped EuclideanGeometry

If $C_1,\ldots,C_n$ are circles in $\mathbb{R}^2$ with radii $r_1,\ldots,r_n$ such that no line disjoint from all the circles divides them into two non-empty sets then the circles can be covered by a circle of radius $r=\sum r_i$.

This is true, and was proved by Goodman and Goodman [GoGo45] (whose proof also generalises to higher dimensions). A generalisation to convex bodies was proved by Hadwiger [Ha47].

An alternative proof is given by Bezdek and Litvak [BeLi16].

@[category research solved, AMS 52, formal_proof using lean4 at "https://github.com/plby/lean-proofs/blob/main/src/v4.29.1/ErdosProblems/Erdos1121.lean"] theorem erdos_1121 {n : } (c : Fin n ℝ²) (r : Fin n ) (hr : i, 0 < r i) (hsep : (v : ℝ²) (t : ), v 0 ( i, p Metric.closedBall (c i) (r i), inner v p t) ( i, inner v (c i) < t) ( i, t < inner v (c i))) : z : ℝ², ( i, Metric.closedBall (c i) (r i)) Metric.closedBall z ( i, r i) := n:c:Fin n ℝ²r:Fin n hr: (i : Fin n), 0 < r ihsep: (v : ℝ²) (t : ), v 0 (∀ (i : Fin n), p Metric.closedBall (c i) (r i), inner v p t) (∀ (i : Fin n), inner v (c i) < t) (i : Fin n), t < inner v (c i) z, i, Metric.closedBall (c i) (r i) Metric.closedBall z (∑ i, r i) All goals completed! 🐙

The proof of Goodman and Goodman [GoGo45] also generalises to higher dimensions: if $B_1,\ldots,B_n$ are balls in $\mathbb{R}^d$ with radii $r_1,\ldots,r_n$ such that no hyperplane disjoint from all the balls divides them into two non-empty sets then the balls can be covered by a ball of radius $r=\sum r_i$.

@[category research solved, AMS 52] theorem erdos_1121.variants.higher_dimension {d n : } (c : Fin n EuclideanSpace (Fin d)) (r : Fin n ) (hr : i, 0 < r i) (hsep : (v : EuclideanSpace (Fin d)) (t : ), v 0 ( i, p Metric.closedBall (c i) (r i), inner v p t) ( i, inner v (c i) < t) ( i, t < inner v (c i))) : z : EuclideanSpace (Fin d), ( i, Metric.closedBall (c i) (r i)) Metric.closedBall z ( i, r i) := d:n:c:Fin n ℝ^dr:Fin n hr: (i : Fin n), 0 < r ihsep: (v : ℝ^d) (t : ), v 0 (∀ (i : Fin n), p Metric.closedBall (c i) (r i), inner v p t) (∀ (i : Fin n), inner v (c i) < t) (i : Fin n), t < inner v (c i) z, i, Metric.closedBall (c i) (r i) Metric.closedBall z (∑ i, r i) All goals completed! 🐙end Erdos1121