Background info: in Machine Learning there's something called an SVM (Support Vector Machine) that employs a "kernel trick" to map sets of points to a higher dimension in order to find a hyperplane that linearly separates the sets of points.
For example, suppose a set of 2D "green" points are inside a unit circle centered at the origin, and a set of 2D "red" points are in the annulus (also centered at the origin) whose inner/outer radius is 2 and 3.
Then an SVM kernel can map these sets of points to a paraboloid of revolution in 3D, and the plane with equation z = 1.5 would be the "maximally separating" hyperplane.
The interesting fact is that the kernel trick works for "nested" sets of points (as in the preceding example).
With the preceding in mind: a) under which constraints can sets (clusters) of n-dimensional points be mapped to (n+1)-dimensional points and be assured of finding a hyperplane that linearly separates the sets of points?
b) would a) be true for sets of (n+k)-dim points where k>=2?
c) would a) be true in the case of any arbitrary collection of compact and connected sets (of 2D points) that are "non-nested" and pairwise non-intersecting?
There are variations of the preceding questions but these are enough to start with:)
Btw I'm not sure if this question is best answered in differential geometry or differential topology (or perhaps something else?)
a) For this question, I think we can always find a mapping from dimension n to dimension n+1 that allows us to linearly separate two clusters. For example, we can keep the first n dimension and choose the last component of the $n+1$ dimension to be the label of the cluster (0 or 1). Then we can separate the two clusters with the hyperplane $x_{n+1} = \frac{1}{2}$.
b) and c) are consequences of a) if I'm not wrong. For b) for example, we can just set the components in dimensions $n+2$, ..., $n+k$ to be equal to zero in the mapping of a).