{"paper":{"title":"A Two-Graph Refinement of Paulsen's Lollipop Bounds","license":"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/","headline":"","cross_cats":["math.MG"],"primary_cat":"math.CO","authors_text":"Paras Chopra, Siddhartha Mahajan","submitted_at":"2026-06-04T12:05:17Z","abstract_excerpt":"Let $a_L(n)$ be the maximum number of regions into which $n$ lollipops divide the plane. Paulsen introduced a second obstruction for this problem, based on pairs of circles meeting at obtuse angle, in addition to the stem-direction obstruction of Cutler-Karlsson-Sloane. We recast Paulsen's argument as a weighted problem for two graphs: a $K_4$-free graph $D$ of non-close stem pairs and a $K_5$-free graph $E$ of non-intriguing circle pairs. For the total number $C$ of pairwise crossings, $$ C\\le 4\\binom n2+|D|+|E|+|D\\cap E|. $$ Paulsen bounds the final term by $|D|$. We keep the overlap term an"},"claims":{"count":0,"items":[],"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"source":{"id":"2606.06064","kind":"arxiv","version":1},"verdict":{"id":null,"model_set":{},"created_at":null,"strongest_claim":"","one_line_summary":"","pipeline_version":null,"weakest_assumption":"","pith_extraction_headline":""},"integrity":{"clean":true,"summary":{"advisory":0,"critical":0,"by_detector":{},"informational":0},"endpoint":"/pith/2606.06064/integrity.json","findings":[],"available":true,"detectors_run":[],"snapshot_sha256":"c28c3603d3b5d939e8dc4c7e95fa8dfce3d595e45f758748cecf8e644a296938"},"references":{"count":0,"sample":[],"resolved_work":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57","internal_anchors":0},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}