2006/09/06 by Dragutin Svrtan, Svrtan, Dragutin, Igor Urbiha +1
Engineering · Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #05A15 #11B37 #11Y55 #11Y65 #26A18 #74H05 #Advanced Combinatorial Mathematics #FOS: Mathematics #FOS: Physical sciences #Graph theory and applications #Mathematical Physics (math-ph) #Metric Geometry (math.MG) #graph theory and CDMA systems #math-ph #math.MG #math.MP #msc:05A15 #msc:11B37 #msc:11Y55 #msc:11Y65 #msc:26A18 #msc:74H05
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.math/0609174
49 pages, 8 figures
arxiv created 2006/09/06 · openalex publication_date 2006/09/06 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
In 2001 Sir M. F. Atiyah formulated a conjecture C1 and later with P. Sutcliffe two stronger conjectures C2 and C3. These conjectures, inspired by physics (spin-statistics theorem of quantum mechanics), are geometrically defined for any configuration of points in the Euclidean three space. The conjecture C1 is proved for n = 3, 4 and for general n only for some special configurations (M. F. Atiyah, M. Eastwood and P. Norbury, D.Đoković). Interestingly the conjecture C2 (and also stronger C3) is not yet proven even for arbitrary four points in a plane. So far we have verified the conjectures C2 and C3 for parallelograms, cyclic quadrilaterals and some infinite families of tetrahedra. We have also proposed a strengthening of conjecture C3 for configurations of four points (Four Points Conjectures). For almost collinear configurations (with all but one point on a line) we propose several new conjectures (some for symmetric functions) which imply C2 and C3. By using computations with multi-Schur functions we can do verifications up to n=9 of our conjectures. We can also verify stronger conjecture of Đokovi' c which imply C2 for his nonplanar configurations with dihedral symmetry. Finally we mention that by minimizing a geometrically defined energy, figuring in these conjectures, one gets a connection to some complicated physical theories, such as Skyrmions and Fullerenes.