134,913 research outputs found
On the Richter-Thomassen Conjecture about Pairwise Intersecting Closed Curves
A long standing conjecture of Richter and Thomassen states that the total
number of intersection points between any simple closed Jordan curves in
the plane, so that any pair of them intersect and no three curves pass through
the same point, is at least .
We confirm the above conjecture in several important cases, including the
case (1) when all curves are convex, and (2) when the family of curves can be
partitioned into two equal classes such that each curve from the first class is
touching every curve from the second class. (Two curves are said to be touching
if they have precisely one point in common, at which they do not properly
cross.)
An important ingredient of our proofs is the following statement: Let be
a family of the graphs of continuous real functions defined on
, no three of which pass through the same point. If there are
pairs of touching curves in , then the number of crossing points is
.Comment: To appear in SODA 201
On the number of tetrahedra with minimum, unit, and distinct volumes in three-space
We formulate and give partial answers to several combinatorial problems on
volumes of simplices determined by points in 3-space, and in general in
dimensions. (i) The number of tetrahedra of minimum (nonzero) volume spanned by
points in \RR^3 is at most , and there are point sets
for which this number is . We also present an time
algorithm for reporting all tetrahedra of minimum nonzero volume, and thereby
extend an algorithm of Edelsbrunner, O'Rourke, and Seidel. In general, for
every k,d\in \NN, , the maximum number of -dimensional
simplices of minimum (nonzero) volume spanned by points in \RR^d is
. (ii) The number of unit-volume tetrahedra determined by
points in \RR^3 is , and there are point sets for which this
number is . (iii) For every d\in \NN, the minimum
number of distinct volumes of all full-dimensional simplices determined by
points in \RR^d, not all on a hyperplane, is .Comment: 19 pages, 3 figures, a preliminary version has appeard in proceedings
of the ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms, 200
LR characterization of chirotopes of finite planar families of pairwise disjoint convex bodies
We extend the classical LR characterization of chirotopes of finite planar
families of points to chirotopes of finite planar families of pairwise disjoint
convex bodies: a map \c{hi} on the set of 3-subsets of a finite set I is a
chirotope of finite planar families of pairwise disjoint convex bodies if and
only if for every 3-, 4-, and 5-subset J of I the restriction of \c{hi} to the
set of 3-subsets of J is a chirotope of finite planar families of pairwise
disjoint convex bodies. Our main tool is the polarity map, i.e., the map that
assigns to a convex body the set of lines missing its interior, from which we
derive the key notion of arrangements of double pseudolines, introduced for the
first time in this paper.Comment: 100 pages, 73 figures; accepted manuscript versio
Multitriangulations, pseudotriangulations and primitive sorting networks
We study the set of all pseudoline arrangements with contact points which
cover a given support. We define a natural notion of flip between these
arrangements and study the graph of these flips. In particular, we provide an
enumeration algorithm for arrangements with a given support, based on the
properties of certain greedy pseudoline arrangements and on their connection
with sorting networks. Both the running time per arrangement and the working
space of our algorithm are polynomial.
As the motivation for this work, we provide in this paper a new
interpretation of both pseudotriangulations and multitriangulations in terms of
pseudoline arrangements on specific supports. This interpretation explains
their common properties and leads to a natural definition of
multipseudotriangulations, which generalizes both. We study elementary
properties of multipseudotriangulations and compare them to iterations of
pseudotriangulations.Comment: 60 pages, 40 figures; minor corrections and improvements of
presentatio
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