Minimum Convex Partitions and Maximum Empty Polytopes

Let $S$ be a set of $n$ points in $\mathbb{R}^d$. A Steiner convex partition is a tiling of ${\rm conv}(S)$ with empty convex bodies. For every integer $d$, we show that $S$ admits a Steiner convex partition with at most $\lceil (n-1)/d\rceil$ tiles. This bound is the best possible for points in general position in the plane, and it is best possible apart from constant factors in every fixed dimension $d\geq 3$. We also give the first constant-factor approximation algorithm for computing a minimum Steiner convex partition of a planar point set in general position. Establishing a tight lower bound for the maximum volume of a tile in a Steiner convex partition of any $n$ points in the unit cube is equivalent to a famous problem of Danzer and Rogers. It is conjectured that the volume of the largest tile is $\omega(1/n)$. Here we give a $(1-\varepsilon)$-approximation algorithm for computing the maximum volume of an empty convex body amidst $n$ given points in the $d$-dimensional unit box $[0,1]^d$.Comment: 16 pages, 4 figures; revised write-up with some running times improve

The cross covariogram of a pair of polygons determines both polygons, with a few exceptions

The cross covariogram g_{K,L} of two convex sets K and L in R^n is the function which associates to each x in R^n the volume of the intersection of K and L+x. Very recently Averkov and Bianchi [AB] have confirmed Matheron's conjecture on the covariogram problem, that asserts that any planar convex body K is determined by the knowledge of g_{K,K}. The problem of determining the sets from their covariogram is relevant in probability, in statistical shape recognition and in the determination of the atomic structure of a quasicrystal from X-ray diffraction images. We prove that when K and L are convex polygons (and also when K and L are planar convex cones) g_{K,L} determines both K and L, up to a described family of exceptions. These results imply that, when K and L are in these classes, the information provided by the cross covariogram is so rich as to determine not only one unknown body, as required by Matheron's conjecture, but two bodies, with a few classified exceptions. These results are also used by Bianchi [Bia] to prove that any convex polytope P in R^3 is determined by g_{P,P}.Comment: 26 pages, 9 figure

On kk-Gons and kk-Holes in Point Sets

We consider a variation of the classical Erd\H{o}s-Szekeres problems on the existence and number of convex $k$-gons and $k$-holes (empty $k$-gons) in a set of $n$ points in the plane. Allowing the $k$-gons to be non-convex, we show bounds and structural results on maximizing and minimizing their numbers. Most noteworthy, for any $k$ and sufficiently large $n$, we give a quadratic lower bound for the number of $k$-holes, and show that this number is maximized by sets in convex position

On rr-Guarding Thin Orthogonal Polygons

Guarding a polygon with few guards is an old and well-studied problem in computational geometry. Here we consider the following variant: We assume that the polygon is orthogonal and thin in some sense, and we consider a point $p$ to guard a point $q$ if and only if the minimum axis-aligned rectangle spanned by $p$ and $q$ is inside the polygon. A simple proof shows that this problem is NP-hard on orthogonal polygons with holes, even if the polygon is thin. If there are no holes, then a thin polygon becomes a tree polygon in the sense that the so-called dual graph of the polygon is a tree. It was known that finding the minimum set of $r$-guards is polynomial for tree polygons, but the run-time was $\tilde{O}(n^{17})$. We show here that with a different approach the running time becomes linear, answering a question posed by Biedl et al. (SoCG 2011). Furthermore, the approach is much more general, allowing to specify subsets of points to guard and guards to use, and it generalizes to polygons with $h$ holes or thickness $K$, becoming fixed-parameter tractable in $h+K$.Comment: 18 page