cs.AIFeb 6, 2026

Improved Upper Bounds for Slicing the Hypercube

Authors: Duncan Soiffer, Nathaniel Itty, Christopher D. Rosin, Blake Bruell, Mason DiCicco, Gábor N. Sárközy, Ryan Offstein, Daniel Reichman

Organizations: Carnegie Mellon University · Work done while at Worcester Polytechnic Institute · Constructive Codes · Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Abstract

A collection of hyperplanes H\mathcal{H} slices all edges of the nn-dimensional hypercube QnQ_n with vertex set {−1,1}n\{-1,1\}^n if, for every edge ee in the hypercube, there exists a hyperplane in H\mathcal{H} intersecting ee in its interior. Let S(n)S(n) be the minimum number of hyperplanes needed to slice QnQ_n. We prove that S(n)≤⌈4n5⌉S(n) \leq \lceil \frac{4n}{5} \rceil, except when nn is an odd multiple of 55, in which case S(n)≤4n5+1S(n) \leq \frac{4n}{5} +1. This improves upon the previously known upper bound of S(n)≤⌈5n6⌉S(n) \leq \lceil\frac{5n}{6} \rceil due to Paterson reported in 1971. We also obtain new lower bounds on the maximum number of edges in QnQ_n that can be sliced using k<nk<n hyperplanes. We prove the improved upper bound on S(n)S(n) by constructing 88 hyperplanes slicing Q10Q_{10} aided by the recently introduced CPro1: an automatic tool that uses reasoning LLMs coupled with automated hyperparameter tuning to create search algorithms for the discovery of mathematical constructions.

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