This article is concerned with a general scheme on how to obtain constructive proofs for combinatorial theorems that have topological proofs so far. To this end the combinatorial concept of Tucker-property of a finite group $G$ is introduced and its relation to the topological Borsuk-Ulam-property is discussed. Applications of the Tucker-property in combinatorics are demonstrated.
Stiebitz determined the chromatic number of generalised Mycielski graphs using the topological method of Lovasz, which invokes the Borsuk-Ulam theorem. Van Ngoc and Tuza used elementary combinatorial arguments to prove Stiebitz's theorem for 4-chromatic generalised Mycielski graphs, and asked if there is also an elementary combinatorial proof for higher chromatic number. We answer their question by showing that Stiebitz's theorem can be deduced from a version of Fan's combinatorial lemma. Our proof uses topological terminology, but is otherwise completely discrete and could be rewritten to avo…
This paper establishes a Borsuk-Ulam type theorem for PL-manifolds with a finite group action, depending on the free equivariant cobordism class of a manifold. In particular, necessary and sufficient conditions are considered for a manifold with a free involution to be a Borsuk-Ulam type.
In this paper we consider several generalizations of the Borsuk-Ulam theorem for G-spaces and apply these results to Tucker type lemmas for G-simplicial complexes and PL-manifolds.
In this paper some results on the topology of the space of $k$-flats in $\mathbb R^n$ are proved, similar to the Borsuk-Ulam theorem on coverings of sphere. Some corollaries on common transversals for families of compact sets in $\mathbb R^n$, and on measure partitions by hyperplanes, are deduced.
We consider spaces with free involutions that satisfy the Borsuk - Ulam theorems (BUT-spaces). There are several equivalent definitions for BUT-spaces that can be considered as their properties. Our main technical tool is Yang's cohomological index.
We give a different and possibly more accessible proof of a general Borsuk--Ulam theorem for a product of spheres, originally due to Ramos. That is, we show the non-existence of certain $(\mathbb{Z}/2)^k$-equivariant maps from a product of $k$ spheres to the unit sphere in a real $(\mathbb{Z}/2)^k$-representation of the same dimension. Our proof method allows us to derive Borsuk--Ulam theorems for certain equivariant maps from Stiefel manifolds, from the corresponding results about products of spheres, leading to alternative proofs and extensions of some results of Fadell and Husseini.
A Chain-Level Borsuk--Ulam Obstruction Proof of Norine's Antipodal-Coloring Conjecture
Shanghai Center for Mathematical Sciences, Fudan University（复旦大学上海数学中心）；School of Mathematical Sciences, Fudan University（复旦大学数学科学学院）；Extremal Combinatorics and Probability Group (ECOPRO), Institute for Basic Science (IBS)（基础科学研究院极值组合与概率研究组）
In combinatorial problems it is sometimes possible to define a $G$-equivariant mapping from a space $X$ of configurations of a system to a Euclidean space $\mathbb{R}^m$ for which a coincidence of the image of this mapping with an arrangement $\mathcal{A}$ of linear subspaces insures a desired set of linear conditions on a configuration. Borsuk-Ulam type theorems give conditions under which no $G$-equivariant mapping of $X$ to the complement of the arrangement exist. In this paper, precise conditions are presented which lead to such theorems through a spectral sequence argument. We introduce a…
Tucker's Lemma is a combinatorial analog of the Borsuk-Ulam theorem and the case n=2 was proposed by Tucker in 1945. Numerous generalizations and applications of the Lemma have appeared since then. In 2006 Meunier proved the Lemma in its full generality in his Ph.D. thesis. There are generalizations and extensions of the Borsuk-Ulam theorem that do not yet have combinatorial analogs. In this note, we give a combinatorial analog of a result of Freeman J. Dyson and show that our result is equivalent to Dyson's theorem. As with Tucker's Lemma, we hope that this will lead to generalizations and ap…
Thickenings of a metric space capture local geometric properties of the space. Here we exhibit applications of lower bounding the topology of thickenings of the circle and more generally the sphere. We explain interconnections with the geometry of circle actions on Euclidean space, the structure of zeros of trigonometric polynomials, and theorems of Borsuk-Ulam type. We use the combinatorial and geometric structure of the convex hull of orbits of circle actions on Euclidean space to give geometric proofs of the homotopy type of metric thickenings of the circle. Homotopical connectivity bounds …
The Sperner and Tucker lemmas are combinatorial analogous of the Brouwer and Borsuk - Ulam theorems with many useful applications. These classic lemmas are concerning labellings of triangulated discs and spheres. In this paper we show that discs and spheres can be substituted by large classes of manifolds with or without boundary.
Bárány's "topological Tverberg conjecture" from 1976 states that any continuous map of an $N$-simplex $Δ_N$ to $\mathbb{R}^d$, for $N\ge(d+1)(r-1)$, maps points from $r$ disjoint faces in $Δ_N$ to the same point in $\mathbb{R}^d$. The proof of this result for the case when $r$ is a prime, as well as some colored version of the same result, using the results of Borsuk-Ulam and Dold on the non-existence of equivariant maps between spaces with a free group action, were main topics of Matoušek's 2003 book "Using the Borsuk-Ulam theorem." In this paper we show how advanced equivariant topology meth…
The Kneser conjecture (1955) was proved by Lovász (1978) using the Borsuk-Ulam theorem; all subsequent proofs, extensions and generalizations also relied on Algebraic Topology results, namely the Borsuk-Ulam theorem and its extensions. Only in 2000, Matoušek provided the first combinatorial proof of the Kneser conjecture. Here we provide a hypergraph coloring theorem, with a combinatorial proof, which has as special cases the Kneser conjecture as well as its extensions and generalization by (hyper)graph coloring theorems of Dol'nikov, Alon-Frankl-Lovász, Sarkaria, and Kriz. We also give a comb…
Tucker and Ky Fan's lemma are combinatorial analogs of the Borsuk-Ulam theorem (BUT). In 1996, Yu. A. Shashkin proved a version of Fan's lemma, which is a combinatorial analog of the odd mapping theorem (OMT). We consider generalizations of these lemmas for BUT-manifolds, i.e. for manifolds that satisfy BUT. Proofs rely on a generalization of the OMT and on a lemma about the doubling of manifolds with boundaries that are BUT-manifolds.
In view of Tucker's lemma (an equivalent combinatorial version of the Borsuk- Ulam theorem), the present authors (2013) introduced the kth altermatic number of a graph G as a tight lower bound for the chromatic number of G. In this note, we present a purely combinatorial proof for this result.
