1,160 research outputs found
Packing-limited growth of irregular objects
We study growth limited by packing for irregular objects in two dimensions.
We generate packings by seeding objects randomly in time and space and allowing
each object to grow until it collides with another object. The objects we
consider allow us to investigate the separate effects of anisotropy and
non-unit aspect ratio. By means of a connection to the decay of pore-space
volume, we measure power law exponents for the object size distribution. We
carry out a scaling analysis, showing that it provides an upper bound for the
size distribution exponent. We find that while the details of the growth
mechanism are irrelevant, the exponent is strongly shape dependent. Potential
applications lie in ecological and biological environments where sessile
organisms compete for limited space as they grow.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, 1 table, revtex
How many matchings cover the nodes of a graph?
Given an undirected graph, are there matchings whose union covers all of
its nodes, that is, a matching--cover? A first, easy polynomial solution
from matroid union is possible, as already observed by Wang, Song and Yuan
(Mathematical Programming, 2014). However, it was not satisfactory neither from
the algorithmic viewpoint nor for proving graphic theorems, since the
corresponding matroid ignores the edges of the graph.
We prove here, simply and algorithmically: all nodes of a graph can be
covered with matchings if and only if for every stable set we have
. When , an exception occurs: this condition is not
enough to guarantee the existence of a matching--cover, that is, the
existence of a perfect matching, in this case Tutte's famous matching theorem
(J. London Math. Soc., 1947) provides the right `good' characterization. The
condition above then guarantees only that a perfect -matching exists, as
known from another theorem of Tutte (Proc. Amer. Math. Soc., 1953).
Some results are then deduced as consequences with surprisingly simple
proofs, using only the level of difficulty of bipartite matchings. We give some
generalizations, as well as a solution for minimization if the edge-weights are
non-negative, while the edge-cardinality maximization of matching--covers
turns out to be already NP-hard.
We have arrived at this problem as the line graph special case of a model
arising for manufacturing integrated circuits with the technology called
`Directed Self Assembly'.Comment: 10 page
Minkowski Tensors of Anisotropic Spatial Structure
This article describes the theoretical foundation of and explicit algorithms
for a novel approach to morphology and anisotropy analysis of complex spatial
structure using tensor-valued Minkowski functionals, the so-called Minkowski
tensors. Minkowski tensors are generalisations of the well-known scalar
Minkowski functionals and are explicitly sensitive to anisotropic aspects of
morphology, relevant for example for elastic moduli or permeability of
microstructured materials. Here we derive explicit linear-time algorithms to
compute these tensorial measures for three-dimensional shapes. These apply to
representations of any object that can be represented by a triangulation of its
bounding surface; their application is illustrated for the polyhedral Voronoi
cellular complexes of jammed sphere configurations, and for triangulations of a
biopolymer fibre network obtained by confocal microscopy. The article further
bridges the substantial notational and conceptual gap between the different but
equivalent approaches to scalar or tensorial Minkowski functionals in
mathematics and in physics, hence making the mathematical measure theoretic
method more readily accessible for future application in the physical sciences
- …