Realizing the chromatic numbers and orders of spinal quadrangulations of surfaces

A method is suggested for construction of quadrangulations of the closed orientable surface with given genus g and either (1) with given chromatic number or (2) with given order allowed by the genus g. In particular, N. Hartsfield and G. Ringel's results [Minimal quadrangulations of orientable surfaces, J. Combin. Theory, Series B 46 (1989) 84-95] are generalized by way of generating new minimal quadrangulations of infinitely many other genera.Comment: 6 pages. This version is only slightly different from the original version submitted on 8 Jul 2012: the author's affiliation has been changed and the presentation has been slightly improve

A topological classification of convex bodies

The shape of homogeneous, generic, smooth convex bodies as described by the Euclidean distance with nondegenerate critical points, measured from the center of mass represents a rather restricted class M_C of Morse-Smale functions on S^2. Here we show that even M_C exhibits the complexity known for general Morse-Smale functions on S^2 by exhausting all combinatorial possibilities: every 2-colored quadrangulation of the sphere is isomorphic to a suitably represented Morse-Smale complex associated with a function in M_C (and vice versa). We prove our claim by an inductive algorithm, starting from the path graph P_2 and generating convex bodies corresponding to quadrangulations with increasing number of vertices by performing each combinatorially possible vertex splitting by a convexity-preserving local manipulation of the surface. Since convex bodies carrying Morse-Smale complexes isomorphic to P_2 exist, this algorithm not only proves our claim but also generalizes the known classification scheme in [36]. Our expansion algorithm is essentially the dual procedure to the algorithm presented by Edelsbrunner et al. in [21], producing a hierarchy of increasingly coarse Morse-Smale complexes. We point out applications to pebble shapes.Comment: 25 pages, 10 figure

Linear Complexity Hexahedral Mesh Generation

We show that any polyhedron forming a topological ball with an even number of quadrilateral sides can be partitioned into O(n) topological cubes, meeting face to face. The result generalizes to non-simply-connected polyhedra satisfying an additional bipartiteness condition. The same techniques can also be used to reduce the geometric version of the hexahedral mesh generation problem to a finite case analysis amenable to machine solution.Comment: 12 pages, 17 figures. A preliminary version of this paper appeared at the 12th ACM Symp. on Computational Geometry. This is the final version, and will appear in a special issue of Computational Geometry: Theory and Applications for papers from SCG '9

Equivelar and d-Covered Triangulations of Surfaces. I

We survey basic properties and bounds for $q$-equivelar and $d$-covered triangulations of closed surfaces. Included in the survey is a list of the known sources for $q$-equivelar and $d$-covered triangulations. We identify all orientable and non-orientable surfaces $M$ of Euler characteristic $0>\chi(M)\geq -230$ which admit non-neighborly $q$-equivelar triangulations with equality in the upper bound $q\leq\Bigl\lfloor\tfrac{1}{2}(5+\sqrt{49-24\chi (M)})\Bigl\rfloor$. These examples give rise to $d$-covered triangulations with equality in the upper bound $d\leq2\Bigl\lfloor\tfrac{1}{2}(5+\sqrt{49-24\chi (M)})\Bigl\rfloor$. A generalization of Ringel's cyclic $7{\rm mod}12$ series of neighborly orientable triangulations to a two-parameter family of cyclic orientable triangulations $R_{k,n}$, $k\geq 0$, $n\geq 7+12k$, is the main result of this paper. In particular, the two infinite subseries $R_{k,7+12k+1}$ and $R_{k,7+12k+2}$, $k\geq 1$, provide non-neighborly examples with equality for the upper bound for $q$ as well as derived examples with equality for the upper bound for $d$.Comment: 21 pages, 4 figure