A simple approach for lower-bounding the distortion in any Hyperbolic embedding

International audienceWe answer open questions of [Verbeek and Suri, SOCG'14] on the relationships between Gromov hyperbolicity and the optimal stretch of graph embeddings in Hyperbolic space. Then, based on the relationships between hyperbolicity and Cops and Robber games, we turn necessary conditions for a graph to be Cop-win into sufficient conditions for a graph to have a large hyperbolicity (and so, no low-stretch embedding in Hyperbolic space). In doing so we derive lower-bounds on the hyperbolicity in various graph classes – such as Cayley graphs, distance-regular graphs and generalized polygons, to name a few. It partly fills in a gap in the literature on Gromov hyperbolicity, for which few lower-bound techniques are known

Squarepants in a Tree: Sum of Subtree Clustering and Hyperbolic Pants Decomposition

We provide efficient constant factor approximation algorithms for the problems of finding a hierarchical clustering of a point set in any metric space, minimizing the sum of minimimum spanning tree lengths within each cluster, and in the hyperbolic or Euclidean planes, minimizing the sum of cluster perimeters. Our algorithms for the hyperbolic and Euclidean planes can also be used to provide a pants decomposition, that is, a set of disjoint simple closed curves partitioning the plane minus the input points into subsets with exactly three boundary components, with approximately minimum total length. In the Euclidean case, these curves are squares; in the hyperbolic case, they combine our Euclidean square pants decomposition with our tree clustering method for general metric spaces.Comment: 22 pages, 14 figures. This version replaces the proof of what is now Lemma 5.2, as the previous proof was erroneou

Volume distortion in groups

Given a space $Y$ in $X$, a cycle in $Y$ may be filled with a chain in two ways: either by restricting the chain to $Y$ or by allowing it to be anywhere in $X$. When the pair $(G,H)$ acts on $(X, Y)$, we define the $k$-volume distortion function of $H$ in $G$ to measure the large-scale difference between the volumes of such fillings. We show that these functions are quasi-isometry invariants, and thus independent of the choice of spaces, and provide several bounds in terms of other group properties, such as Dehn functions. We also compute the volume distortion in a number of examples, including characterizing the $k$-volume distortion of $\Z^k$ in $\Z^k \rtimes_M \Z$, where $M$ is a diagonalizable matrix. We use this to prove a conjecture of Gersten.Comment: 27 pages, 10 figure