5,515 research outputs found
Decomposition of Multiple Coverings into More Parts
We prove that for every centrally symmetric convex polygon Q, there exists a
constant alpha such that any alpha*k-fold covering of the plane by translates
of Q can be decomposed into k coverings. This improves on a quadratic upper
bound proved by Pach and Toth (SoCG'07). The question is motivated by a sensor
network problem, in which a region has to be monitored by sensors with limited
battery lifetime
Making Octants Colorful and Related Covering Decomposition Problems
We give new positive results on the long-standing open problem of geometric
covering decomposition for homothetic polygons. In particular, we prove that
for any positive integer k, every finite set of points in R^3 can be colored
with k colors so that every translate of the negative octant containing at
least k^6 points contains at least one of each color. The best previously known
bound was doubly exponential in k. This yields, among other corollaries, the
first polynomial bound for the decomposability of multiple coverings by
homothetic triangles. We also investigate related decomposition problems
involving intervals appearing on a line. We prove that no algorithm can
dynamically maintain a decomposition of a multiple covering by intervals under
insertion of new intervals, even in a semi-online model, in which some coloring
decisions can be delayed. This implies that a wide range of sweeping plane
algorithms cannot guarantee any bound even for special cases of the octant
problem.Comment: version after revision process; minor changes in the expositio
Unsplittable coverings in the plane
A system of sets forms an {\em -fold covering} of a set if every point
of belongs to at least of its members. A -fold covering is called a
{\em covering}. The problem of splitting multiple coverings into several
coverings was motivated by classical density estimates for {\em sphere
packings} as well as by the {\em planar sensor cover problem}. It has been the
prevailing conjecture for 35 years (settled in many special cases) that for
every plane convex body , there exists a constant such that every
-fold covering of the plane with translates of splits into
coverings. In the present paper, it is proved that this conjecture is false for
the unit disk. The proof can be generalized to construct, for every , an
unsplittable -fold covering of the plane with translates of any open convex
body which has a smooth boundary with everywhere {\em positive curvature}.
Somewhat surprisingly, {\em unbounded} open convex sets do not misbehave,
they satisfy the conjecture: every -fold covering of any region of the plane
by translates of such a set splits into two coverings. To establish this
result, we prove a general coloring theorem for hypergraphs of a special type:
{\em shift-chains}. We also show that there is a constant such that, for
any positive integer , every -fold covering of a region with unit disks
splits into two coverings, provided that every point is covered by {\em at
most} sets
Colorful Strips
Given a planar point set and an integer , we wish to color the points with
colors so that any axis-aligned strip containing enough points contains all
colors. The goal is to bound the necessary size of such a strip, as a function
of . We show that if the strip size is at least , such a coloring
can always be found. We prove that the size of the strip is also bounded in any
fixed number of dimensions. In contrast to the planar case, we show that
deciding whether a 3D point set can be 2-colored so that any strip containing
at least three points contains both colors is NP-complete.
We also consider the problem of coloring a given set of axis-aligned strips,
so that any sufficiently covered point in the plane is covered by colors.
We show that in dimensions the required coverage is at most .
Lower bounds are given for the two problems. This complements recent
impossibility results on decomposition of strip coverings with arbitrary
orientations. Finally, we study a variant where strips are replaced by wedges
Making Triangles Colorful
We prove that for any point set P in the plane, a triangle T, and a positive
integer k, there exists a coloring of P with k colors such that any homothetic
copy of T containing at least ck^8 points of P, for some constant c, contains
at least one of each color. This is the first polynomial bound for range spaces
induced by homothetic polygons. The only previously known bound for this
problem applies to the more general case of octants in R^3, but is doubly
exponential.Comment: 6 page
Thin coverings of modules
Thin coverings are a method of constructing graded-simple modules from simple
(ungraded) modules. After a general discussion, we classify the thin coverings
of (quasifinite) simple modules over associative algebras graded by finite
abelian groups. The classification uses the representation theory of cyclotomic
quantum tori. We close with an application to representations of multiloop Lie
algebras
Polychromatic Coloring for Half-Planes
We prove that for every integer , every finite set of points in the plane
can be -colored so that every half-plane that contains at least
points, also contains at least one point from every color class. We also show
that the bound is best possible. This improves the best previously known
lower and upper bounds of and respectively. We also show
that every finite set of half-planes can be colored so that if a point
belongs to a subset of at least of the half-planes then
contains a half-plane from every color class. This improves the best previously
known upper bound of . Another corollary of our first result is a new
proof of the existence of small size \eps-nets for points in the plane with
respect to half-planes.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figure
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