7 research outputs found
Flat Foldings of Plane Graphs with Prescribed Angles and Edge Lengths
When can a plane graph with prescribed edge lengths and prescribed angles
(from among \}) be folded flat to lie in an
infinitesimally thin line, without crossings? This problem generalizes the
classic theory of single-vertex flat origami with prescribed mountain-valley
assignment, which corresponds to the case of a cycle graph. We characterize
such flat-foldable plane graphs by two obviously necessary but also sufficient
conditions, proving a conjecture made in 2001: the angles at each vertex should
sum to , and every face of the graph must itself be flat foldable.
This characterization leads to a linear-time algorithm for testing flat
foldability of plane graphs with prescribed edge lengths and angles, and a
polynomial-time algorithm for counting the number of distinct folded states.Comment: 21 pages, 10 figure
On a Tree and a Path with no Geometric Simultaneous Embedding
Two graphs and admit a geometric simultaneous
embedding if there exists a set of points P and a bijection M: P -> V that
induce planar straight-line embeddings both for and for . While it
is known that two caterpillars always admit a geometric simultaneous embedding
and that two trees not always admit one, the question about a tree and a path
is still open and is often regarded as the most prominent open problem in this
area. We answer this question in the negative by providing a counterexample.
Additionally, since the counterexample uses disjoint edge sets for the two
graphs, we also negatively answer another open question, that is, whether it is
possible to simultaneously embed two edge-disjoint trees. As a final result, we
study the same problem when some constraints on the tree are imposed. Namely,
we show that a tree of depth 2 and a path always admit a geometric simultaneous
embedding. In fact, such a strong constraint is not so far from closing the gap
with the instances not admitting any solution, as the tree used in our
counterexample has depth 4.Comment: 42 pages, 33 figure