We consider point sets in the real projective plane ℝ𝒫² and explore variants of classical extremal problems about planar point sets in this setting, with a main focus on Erdős-Szekeres-type problems. We provide asymptotically tight bounds for a variant of the Erdős-Szekeres theorem about point sets in convex position in ℝ𝒫², which was initiated by Harborth and Möller in 1994. The notion of convex position in ℝ𝒫² agrees with the definition of convex sets introduced by Steinitz in 1913. For k ≥ 3, an (affine) k-hole in a finite set S ⊆ ℝ² is a set of k points from S in convex position with no point of S in the interior of their convex hull. After introducing a new notion of k-holes for points sets from ℝ𝒫², called projective k-holes, we find arbitrarily large finite sets of points from ℝ𝒫² with no projective 8-holes, providing an analogue of a classical result by Horton from 1983. We also prove that they contain only quadratically many projective k-holes for k ≤ 7. On the other hand, we show that the number of k-holes can be substantially larger in ℝ𝒫² than in ℝ² by constructing, for every k ∈ {3,… ,6}, sets of n points from ℝ² ⊂ ℝ𝒫² with Ω(n^{3-3/5k}) projective k-holes and only O(n²) affine k-holes. Last but not least, we prove several other results, for example about projective holes in random point sets in ℝ𝒫² and about some algorithmic aspects. The study of extremal problems about point sets in ℝ𝒫² opens a new area of research, which we support by posing several open problems.
@InProceedings{balko_et_al:LIPIcs.SoCG.2022.10, author = {Balko, Martin and Scheucher, Manfred and Valtr, Pavel}, title = {{Erd\H{o}s-Szekeres-Type Problems in the Real Projective Plane}}, booktitle = {38th International Symposium on Computational Geometry (SoCG 2022)}, pages = {10:1--10:15}, series = {Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)}, ISBN = {978-3-95977-227-3}, ISSN = {1868-8969}, year = {2022}, volume = {224}, editor = {Goaoc, Xavier and Kerber, Michael}, publisher = {Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik}, address = {Dagstuhl, Germany}, URL = {https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.SoCG.2022.10}, URN = {urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-160182}, doi = {10.4230/LIPIcs.SoCG.2022.10}, annote = {Keywords: real projective plane, point set, convex position, k-gon, k-hole, Erd\H{o}s-Szekeres theorem, Horton set, random point set} }
Feedback for Dagstuhl Publishing