On the quasi-uniformity properties of quasi-Monte Carlo digital nets and sequences

Abstract: We study the quasi-uniformity properties of digital nets, a class of quasi-Monte Carlo point sets. Quasi-uniformity is a space-filling property used for instance in experimental designs and radial basis function approximation. However, it has not been investigated so far whether common low-discrepancy digital nets are quasi-uniform, with the exception of the two-dimensional Sobol' sequence, which has recently been shown not to be quasi-uniform. In this paper, with the goal of constructing quasi-uniform low-discrepancy digital nets, we introduce the notion of \emph{well-separated} point sets and provide an algebraic criterion to determine whether a given digital net is well-separated. Using this criterion, we present an example of a two-dimensional digital net which has low-discrepancy and is quasi-uniform. Additionally, we provide several counterexamples of low-discrepancy digital nets that are not quasi-uniform. The quasi-uniformity properties of quasi-Monte Carlo lattice point sets and sequences will be studied in a forthcoming paper.