Disproofs of Generalized Gilbert–Pollak Conjecture on the Steiner Ratio in Three or More Dimensions

The Gilbert–Pollak conjecture, posed in 1968, was the most important conjecture in the area of “Steiner trees.” The “Steiner minimal tree” (SMT) of a point setPis the shortest network of “wires” which will suffice to “electrically” interconnectP. The “minimum spanning tree” (MST) is the shortest such network when onlyintersite line segmentsare permitted. The generalized GP conjecture stated thatρd=infP⊂Rd(lSMT(P)/lMST(P)) was achieved whenPwas the vertices of a regulard-simplex. It was showed previously that the conjecture is true ford=2 and false for 3⩽d⩽9. We settle remaining cases completely in this paper. Indeed, we show that any point set achievingρdmust have cardinality growing at least exponentially withd. The real question now is: What are the true minimal-ρpoint sets? This paper introduces the “d-dimensional sausage” point sets, which may have a lit to do with the answer.