The periodic square peg problem

Let L>0L>0, and let CylL\mathtt{Cyl}_L be the cylinder obtained from R2\mathbb{R}^2 by identifying points differing by (L,0)(L,0). Let Graph0,L ⁣:R/LZCylL\mathtt{Graph}_{0,L}\colon \mathbb{R}/L\mathbb{Z}\to\mathtt{Cyl}_L be the standard closed curve t(t,0)t\mapsto(t,0). Let σ1,σ2 ⁣:R/LZCylL\sigma_1,\sigma_2\colon\mathbb{R}/L\mathbb{Z}\to\mathtt{Cyl}_L be simple curves homologous to Graph0,L\mathtt{Graph}_{0,L}, with disjoint images.

Periodic square peg conjecture. The union σ1(R/LZ)σ2(R/LZ)\sigma_1(\mathbb{R}/L\mathbb{Z})\cup\sigma_2(\mathbb{R}/L\mathbb{Z}) inscribes a square.

This is a periodic variant of Toeplitz's problem designed to avoid the issue of arbitrarily small squares. It is presented as an open problem in the paper.

Sources & referencesView supporting material

Primary source

Terence Tao, “An integration approach to the Toeplitz square peg problem”, arXiv:1611.07441 (2017).

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