527 research outputs found
Bounds on the Complexity of Halfspace Intersections when the Bounded Faces have Small Dimension
We study the combinatorial complexity of D-dimensional polyhedra defined as
the intersection of n halfspaces, with the property that the highest dimension
of any bounded face is much smaller than D. We show that, if d is the maximum
dimension of a bounded face, then the number of vertices of the polyhedron is
O(n^d) and the total number of bounded faces of the polyhedron is O(n^d^2). For
inputs in general position the number of bounded faces is O(n^d). For any fixed
d, we show how to compute the set of all vertices, how to determine the maximum
dimension of a bounded face of the polyhedron, and how to compute the set of
bounded faces in polynomial time, by solving a polynomial number of linear
programs
Convex hulls of spheres and convex hulls of convex polytopes lying on parallel hyperplanes
Given a set of spheres in , with and
odd, having a fixed number of distinct radii , we
show that the worst-case combinatorial complexity of the convex hull
of is
, where
is the number of spheres in with radius .
To prove the lower bound, we construct a set of spheres in
, with odd, where spheres have radius ,
, and , such that their convex hull has combinatorial
complexity
.
Our construction is then generalized to the case where the spheres have
distinct radii.
For the upper bound, we reduce the sphere convex hull problem to the problem
of computing the worst-case combinatorial complexity of the convex hull of a
set of -dimensional convex polytopes lying on parallel hyperplanes
in , where odd, a problem which is of independent
interest. More precisely, we show that the worst-case combinatorial complexity
of the convex hull of a set
of -dimensional convex polytopes lying on parallel hyperplanes of
is
, where
is the number of vertices of .
We end with algorithmic considerations, and we show how our tight bounds for
the parallel polytope convex hull problem, yield tight bounds on the
combinatorial complexity of the Minkowski sum of two convex polytopes in
.Comment: 22 pages, 5 figures, new proof of upper bound for the complexity of
the convex hull of parallel polytopes (the new proof gives upper bounds for
all face numbers of the convex hull of the parallel polytopes
Three-dimensional alpha shapes
Frequently, data in scientific computing is in its abstract form a finite
point set in space, and it is sometimes useful or required to compute what one
might call the ``shape'' of the set. For that purpose, this paper introduces
the formal notion of the family of -shapes of a finite point set in
\Real^3. Each shape is a well-defined polytope, derived from the Delaunay
triangulation of the point set, with a parameter \alpha \in \Real controlling
the desired level of detail. An algorithm is presented that constructs the
entire family of shapes for a given set of size in time , worst
case. A robust implementation of the algorithm is discussed and several
applications in the area of scientific computing are mentioned.Comment: 32 page
Robust gift wrapping for the three-dimensional convex hull
A conventional gift-wrapping algorithm for constructing the three-dimensional convex hull is revised into a numerically robust one. The proposed algorithm places the highest priority on the topological condition that the boundary of the convex hull should be isomorphic to a sphere, and uses numerical values as lower-prirority information for choosing one among the combinatorially consistent branches. No matter how poor the arithmetic precision may be, the algorithm carries out its task and gives as the output a topologically consistent approximation to the true convex hull
A method for dense packing discovery
The problem of packing a system of particles as densely as possible is
foundational in the field of discrete geometry and is a powerful model in the
material and biological sciences. As packing problems retreat from the reach of
solution by analytic constructions, the importance of an efficient numerical
method for conducting \textit{de novo} (from-scratch) searches for dense
packings becomes crucial. In this paper, we use the \textit{divide and concur}
framework to develop a general search method for the solution of periodic
constraint problems, and we apply it to the discovery of dense periodic
packings. An important feature of the method is the integration of the unit
cell parameters with the other packing variables in the definition of the
configuration space. The method we present led to improvements in the
densest-known tetrahedron packing which are reported in [arXiv:0910.5226].
Here, we use the method to reproduce the densest known lattice sphere packings
and the best known lattice kissing arrangements in up to 14 and 11 dimensions
respectively (the first such numerical evidence for their optimality in some of
these dimensions). For non-spherical particles, we report a new dense packing
of regular four-dimensional simplices with density
and with a similar structure to the densest known tetrahedron packing.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figure
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