Distribution of boundary points of expansion and application to the lonely runner conjecture

Abstract

In this paper, we study the distribution of the boundary points of expansion. As an application, we say something about the lonely runner problem. We show that given $k$ runners ${\mathcal{S}}_i$ round a unit circular track with the condition that at some time $||{\mathcal{S}}_i-{\mathcal{S}}_{i+1}||=||{\mathcal{S}}_{i+1}-{\mathcal{S}}_{i+2}||$ for all $i=1,2\dots ,k-2$, then at that time we have $$||{\mathcal{S}}_{i+1}-{\mathcal{S}}_i||>\frac{\mathcal{D}(n)\pi }{k-1}$$ for all $i=1,\dots ,k-1$ and where $1>\mathcal{D}(n)>0$ is a constant depending on the degree of a certain polynomial of degree $n$. In particular, we show that given at most eight ${\mathcal{S}}_i$~($i=1,2,\dots ,8$) runners running around a unit circular track with distinct constant speed and the additional condition $||{\mathcal{S}}_i-{\mathcal{S}}_{i+1}||=||{\mathcal{S}}_{i+1}-{\mathcal{S}}_{i+2}||$ for all $1\le i\le 6$ at some time $s>1$, then at that time their mutual distance must satisfy the lower bound $$||{\mathcal{S}}_i-{\mathcal{S}}_{i+1}||>\frac{C\pi }{7}$$ for some constant $1>C>0$ for all $1\le i\le 7$.

arXiv comment12 pages; the paper has been reformatted and introduction greatly expanded; ideas remain unchanged