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In a colouring of ℝ^d a pair (S,s₀) with S ⊆ ℝ^d and with s₀ ∈ S is almost-monochromatic if S⧵{s₀} is monochromatic but S is not. We consider questions about finding almost-monochromatic similar copies of pairs (S,s₀) in colourings of ℝ^d, ℤ^d, and of ℚ under some restrictions on the colouring.
Among other results, we characterise those (S,s₀) with S ⊆ ℤ for which every finite colouring of ℝ without an infinite monochromatic arithmetic progression contains an almost-monochromatic similar copy of (S,s₀). We also show that if S ⊆ ℤ^d and s₀ is outside of the convex hull of S⧵{s₀}, then every finite colouring of ℝ^d without a monochromatic similar copy of ℤ^d contains an almost-monochromatic similar copy of (S,s₀). Further, we propose an approach based on finding almost-monochromatic sets that might lead to a human-verifiable proof of χ(ℝ²) ≥ 5.
@InProceedings{frankl_et_al:LIPIcs.SoCG.2020.47,
author = {Frankl, N\'{o}ra and Hubai, Tam\'{a}s and P\'{a}lv\"{o}lgyi, D\"{o}m\"{o}t\"{o}r},
title = {{Almost-Monochromatic Sets and the Chromatic Number of the Plane}},
booktitle = {36th International Symposium on Computational Geometry (SoCG 2020)},
pages = {47:1--47:15},
series = {Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
ISBN = {978-3-95977-143-6},
ISSN = {1868-8969},
year = {2020},
volume = {164},
editor = {Cabello, Sergio and Chen, Danny Z.},
publisher = {Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
address = {Dagstuhl, Germany},
URL = {https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.SoCG.2020.47},
URN = {urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-122054},
doi = {10.4230/LIPIcs.SoCG.2020.47},
annote = {Keywords: discrete geometry, Hadwiger-Nelson problem, Euclidean Ramsey theory}
}