A Lower Bound on the Number of Colours Needed to Nicely Colour a Sphere

Ágoston, Péter (2025) A Lower Bound on the Number of Colours Needed to Nicely Colour a Sphere. DISCRETE AND COMPUTATIONAL GEOMETRY, 74. pp. 691-718. ISSN 0179-5376

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Abstract

The Hadwiger–Nelson problem is about determining the chromatic number of the plane (CNP), defined as the minimum number of colours needed to colour the plane so that no two points of distance 1 have the same colour. In this paper we investigate a related problem for spheres and we use a few natural restrictions on the colouring. Thomassen showed that with these restrictions, the chromatic number of all manifolds satisfying certain properties (including the plane and all spheres with a large enough radius) is at least 7. We prove that with these restrictions, the chromatic number of any sphere with a large enough radius is at least 8. This also gives a new lower bound for the minimum colours needed for colouring the 3-dimensional space with the same restrictions.

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