33 research outputs found
Octants are cover-decomposable into many coverings
We prove that octants are cover-decomposable into multiple coverings, i.e., for any k there is an m(k)m(k) such that any m(k)m(k)-fold covering of any subset of the space with a finite number of translates of a given octant can be decomposed into k coverings. As a corollary, we obtain that any m(k)m(k)-fold covering of any subset of the plane with a finite number of homothetic copies of a given triangle can be decomposed into k coverings. Previously only some weaker bounds were known for related problems [20]
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
Coloring Hypergraphs Induced by Dynamic Point Sets and Bottomless Rectangles
We consider a coloring problem on dynamic, one-dimensional point sets: points
appearing and disappearing on a line at given times. We wish to color them with
k colors so that at any time, any sequence of p(k) consecutive points, for some
function p, contains at least one point of each color.
We prove that no such function p(k) exists in general. However, in the
restricted case in which points appear gradually, but never disappear, we give
a coloring algorithm guaranteeing the property at any time with p(k)=3k-2. This
can be interpreted as coloring point sets in R^2 with k colors such that any
bottomless rectangle containing at least 3k-2 points contains at least one
point of each color. Here a bottomless rectangle is an axis-aligned rectangle
whose bottom edge is below the lowest point of the set. For this problem, we
also prove a lower bound p(k)>ck, where c>1.67. Hence for every k there exists
a point set, every k-coloring of which is such that there exists a bottomless
rectangle containing ck points and missing at least one of the k colors.
Chen et al. (2009) proved that no such function exists in the case of
general axis-aligned rectangles. Our result also complements recent results
from Keszegh and Palvolgyi on cover-decomposability of octants (2011, 2012).Comment: A preliminary version was presented by a subset of the authors to the
European Workshop on Computational Geometry, held in Assisi (Italy) on March
19-21, 201
Convex Polygons are Self-Coverable
We introduce a new notion for geometric families called self-coverability and
show that homothets of convex polygons are self-coverable. As a corollary, we
obtain several results about coloring point sets such that any member of the
family with many points contains all colors. This is dual (and in some cases
equivalent) to the much investigated cover-decomposability problem
More on Decomposing Coverings by Octants
In this note we improve our upper bound given earlier by showing that every
9-fold covering of a point set in the space by finitely many translates of an
octant decomposes into two coverings, and our lower bound by a construction for
a 4-fold covering that does not decompose into two coverings. The same bounds
also hold for coverings of points in by finitely many homothets or
translates of a triangle. We also prove that certain dynamic interval coloring
problems are equivalent to the above question
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
Online and quasi-online colorings of wedges and intervals
We consider proper online colorings of hypergraphs defined by geometric
regions. We prove that there is an online coloring algorithm that colors
intervals of the real line using colors such that for every
point , contained in at least intervals, not all the intervals
containing have the same color. We also prove the corresponding result
about online coloring a family of wedges (quadrants) in the plane that are the
translates of a given fixed wedge. These results contrast the results of the
first and third author showing that in the quasi-online setting 12 colors are
enough to color wedges (independent of and ). We also consider
quasi-online coloring of intervals. In all cases we present efficient coloring
algorithms