Complete Subdivision Algorithms, II: Isotopic Meshing of Singular Algebraic Curves

Given a real valued function f(X,Y), a box region B_0 in R^2 and a positive epsilon, we want to compute an epsilon-isotopic polygonal approximation to the restriction of the curve S=f^{-1}(0)={p in R^2: f(p)=0} to B_0. We focus on subdivision algorithms because of their adaptive complexity and ease of implementation. Plantinga and Vegter gave a numerical subdivision algorithm that is exact when the curve S is bounded and non-singular. They used a computational model that relied only on function evaluation and interval arithmetic. We generalize their algorithm to any bounded (but possibly non-simply connected) region that does not contain singularities of S. With this generalization as a subroutine, we provide a method to detect isolated algebraic singularities and their branching degree. This appears to be the first complete purely numerical method to compute isotopic approximations of algebraic curves with isolated singularities

Deformation of string topology into homotopy skein modules

Relations between the string topology of Chas and Sullivan and the homotopy skein modules of Hoste and Przytycki are studied. This provides new insight into the structure of homotopy skein modules and their meaning in the framework of quantum topology. Our results can be considered as weak extensions to all orientable 3-manifolds of classical results by Turaev and Goldman concerning intersection and skein theory on oriented surfaces.Comment: Published by Algebraic and Geometric Topology at http://www.maths.warwick.ac.uk/agt/AGTVol3/agt-3-34.abs.htm

Plantinga-Vegter algorithm takes average polynomial time

We exhibit a condition-based analysis of the adaptive subdivision algorithm due to Plantinga and Vegter. The first complexity analysis of the PV Algorithm is due to Burr, Gao and Tsigaridas who proved a $O\big(2^{\tau d^{4}\log d}\big)$ worst-case cost bound for degree $d$ plane curves with maximum coefficient bit-size $\tau$. This exponential bound, it was observed, is in stark contrast with the good performance of the algorithm in practice. More in line with this performance, we show that, with respect to a broad family of measures, the expected time complexity of the PV Algorithm is bounded by $O(d^7)$ for real, degree $d$, plane curves. We also exhibit a smoothed analysis of the PV Algorithm that yields similar complexity estimates. To obtain these results we combine robust probabilistic techniques coming from geometric functional analysis with condition numbers and the continuous amortization paradigm introduced by Burr, Krahmer and Yap. We hope this will motivate a fruitful exchange of ideas between the different approaches to numerical computation.Comment: 8 pages, correction of typo

The Complexity of Subdivision for Diameter-Distance Tests

We present a general framework for analyzing the complexity of subdivision-based algorithms whose tests are based on the sizes of regions and their distance to certain sets (often varieties) intrinsic to the problem under study. We call such tests diameter-distance tests. We illustrate that diameter-distance tests are common in the literature by proving that many interval arithmetic-based tests are, in fact, diameter-distance tests. For this class of algorithms, we provide both non-adaptive bounds for the complexity, based on separation bounds, as well as adaptive bounds, by applying the framework of continuous amortization. Using this structure, we provide the first complexity analysis for the algorithm by Plantinga and Vegeter for approximating real implicit curves and surfaces. We present both adaptive and non-adaptive a priori worst-case bounds on the complexity of this algorithm both in terms of the number of subregions constructed and in terms of the bit complexity for the construction. Finally, we construct families of hypersurfaces to prove that our bounds are tight