Discrete Geometry in Normed Spaces

This work refers to ball-intersections bodies as well as covering, packing, and kissing problems related to balls and spheres in normed spaces. A quick introduction to these topics and an overview of our results is given in Section 1.1 of Chapter 1. The needed background knowledge is collected in Section 1.2, also in Chapter 1. In Chapter 2 we define ball-intersection bodies and investigate special classes of them: ball-hulls, ball-intersections, equilateral ball-polyhedra, complete bodies and bodies of constant width. Thus, relations between the ball-hull and the ball-intersection of a set are given. We extend a minimal property of a special class of equilateral ball-polyhedra, known as Theorem of Chakerian, to all normed planes. In order to investigate bodies of constant width, we develop a concept of affine orthogonality, which is new even for the Euclidean subcase. In Chapter 2 we solve kissing, covering, and packing problems. For a given family of circles and lines we find at least one, but for some families even all circles kissing all the members of this family. For that reason we prove that a strictly convex, smooth normed plane is a topological Möbius plane. We give an exact geometric description of the maximal radius of all homothets of the unit disc that can be covered by 3 or 4 translates of it. Also we investigate configurations related to such coverings, namely a regular 4-covering and a Miquelian configuration of circles. We find the concealment number for a packing of translates of the unit ball