Fejes Tóth's conjecture on the sum of acute angles

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Let x1,x2,…,xNx_1, x_2,\dots, x_N be (not necessarily distinct) points on the sphere Sd\mathbb S^{d}, and let θ(xi,xj)\theta(x_i,x_j) denote their non-obtuse geodesic angle. The discrete energy is

∑i,j=1Nθ(xi,xj).\sum_{i,j=1}^N \theta(x_i,x_j).

Fejes Tóth's conjecture. This energy is maximal when x1,…,xd+1x_1,\dots,x_{d+1} are mutually orthogonal and xk=xk−(d+1)x_k=x_{k-(d+1)} for every kk with d+1<k≤Nd+1<k\le N. Equivalently, periodically repeated elements of an orthonormal basis maximize the sum of non-obtuse angles. The conjecture was stated by Fejes Tóth on S2\mathbb S^2 and generalized to all d≥1d\ge 1; it is proved for d=1d=1 and remains open for d>1d>1, including the case N=k(d+1)N=k(d+1).

References

Primary source

Dmitriy Bilyk, Ryan W. Matzke and Joel Nathe, “Geodesic Distance Riesz Energy on Projective Spaces”, arXiv:2409.16508 (2024).

Additional references

2 papers in this index state this conjecture (2018–2024). The statement above is taken from the most recent of them; the others are arXiv:1801.07837.

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