58,205 research outputs found
A combinatorial approach to discrete geometry
We present a paralell approach to discrete geometry: the first one introduces
Voronoi cell complexes from statistical tessellations in order to know the mean
scalar curvature in term of the mean number of edges of a cell. The second one
gives the restriction of a graph from a regular tessellation in order to
calculate the curvature from pure combinatorial properties of the graph.
Our proposal is based in some epistemological pressupositions: the
macroscopic continuous geometry is only a fiction, very usefull for describing
phenomena at certain sacales, but it is only an approximation to the true
geometry. In the discrete geometry one starts from a set of elements and the
relation among them without presuposing space and time as a background.Comment: LaTeX, 5 pages with 3 figures. To appear in the Proceedings of the
XXVIII Spanish Relativity Meeting (ERE2005), 6-10 September 2005, Oviedo,
Spai
Spectral dimension of quantum geometries
The spectral dimension is an indicator of geometry and topology of spacetime
and a tool to compare the description of quantum geometry in various approaches
to quantum gravity. This is possible because it can be defined not only on
smooth geometries but also on discrete (e.g., simplicial) ones. In this paper,
we consider the spectral dimension of quantum states of spatial geometry
defined on combinatorial complexes endowed with additional algebraic data: the
kinematical quantum states of loop quantum gravity (LQG). Preliminarily, the
effects of topology and discreteness of classical discrete geometries are
studied in a systematic manner. We look for states reproducing the spectral
dimension of a classical space in the appropriate regime. We also test the
hypothesis that in LQG, as in other approaches, there is a scale dependence of
the spectral dimension, which runs from the topological dimension at large
scales to a smaller one at short distances. While our results do not give any
strong support to this hypothesis, we can however pinpoint when the topological
dimension is reproduced by LQG quantum states. Overall, by exploring the
interplay of combinatorial, topological and geometrical effects, and by
considering various kinds of quantum states such as coherent states and their
superpositions, we find that the spectral dimension of discrete quantum
geometries is more sensitive to the underlying combinatorial structures than to
the details of the additional data associated with them.Comment: 39 pages, 18 multiple figures. v2: discussion improved, minor typos
correcte
Combinatorial Stokes formulas via minimal resolutions
We describe an explicit chain map from the standard resolution to the minimal
resolution for the finite cyclic group Z_k of order k. We then demonstrate how
such a chain map induces a "Z_k-combinatorial Stokes theorem", which in turn
implies "Dold's theorem" that there is no equivariant map from an n-connected
to an n-dimensional free Z_k-complex.
Thus we build a combinatorial access road to problems in combinatorics and
discrete geometry that have previously been treated with methods from
equivariant topology. The special case k=2 for this is classical; it involves
Tucker's (1949) combinatorial lemma which implies the Borsuk-Ulam theorem, its
proof via chain complexes by Lefschetz (1949), the combinatorial Stokes formula
of Fan (1967), and Meunier's work (2006).Comment: 18 page
Combinatorial complexity in o-minimal geometry
In this paper we prove tight bounds on the combinatorial and topological
complexity of sets defined in terms of definable sets belonging to some
fixed definable family of sets in an o-minimal structure. This generalizes the
combinatorial parts of similar bounds known in the case of semi-algebraic and
semi-Pfaffian sets, and as a result vastly increases the applicability of
results on combinatorial and topological complexity of arrangements studied in
discrete and computational geometry. As a sample application, we extend a
Ramsey-type theorem due to Alon et al., originally proved for semi-algebraic
sets of fixed description complexity to this more general setting.Comment: 25 pages. Revised version. To appear in the Proc. London Math. So
On the Combinatorial Complexity of Approximating Polytopes
Approximating convex bodies succinctly by convex polytopes is a fundamental
problem in discrete geometry. A convex body of diameter
is given in Euclidean -dimensional space, where is a constant. Given an
error parameter , the objective is to determine a polytope of
minimum combinatorial complexity whose Hausdorff distance from is at most
. By combinatorial complexity we mean the
total number of faces of all dimensions of the polytope. A well-known result by
Dudley implies that facets suffice, and a dual
result by Bronshteyn and Ivanov similarly bounds the number of vertices, but
neither result bounds the total combinatorial complexity. We show that there
exists an approximating polytope whose total combinatorial complexity is
, where conceals a
polylogarithmic factor in . This is a significant improvement
upon the best known bound, which is roughly .
Our result is based on a novel combination of both old and new ideas. First,
we employ Macbeath regions, a classical structure from the theory of convexity.
The construction of our approximating polytope employs a new stratified
placement of these regions. Second, in order to analyze the combinatorial
complexity of the approximating polytope, we present a tight analysis of a
width-based variant of B\'{a}r\'{a}ny and Larman's economical cap covering.
Finally, we use a deterministic adaptation of the witness-collector technique
(developed recently by Devillers et al.) in the context of our stratified
construction.Comment: In Proceedings of the 32nd International Symposium Computational
Geometry (SoCG 2016) and accepted to SoCG 2016 special issue of Discrete and
Computational Geometr
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