Enumerating Foldings and Unfoldings between Polygons and Polytopes

We pose and answer several questions concerning the number of ways to fold a polygon to a polytope, and how many polytopes can be obtained from one polygon; and the analogous questions for unfolding polytopes to polygons. Our answers are, roughly: exponentially many, or nondenumerably infinite.Comment: 12 pages; 10 figures; 10 references. Revision of version in Proceedings of the Japan Conference on Discrete and Computational Geometry, Tokyo, Nov. 2000, pp. 9-12. See also cs.CG/000701

Examples, Counterexamples, and Enumeration Results for Foldings and Unfoldings between Polygons and Polytopes

We investigate how to make the surface of a convex polyhedron (a polytope) by folding up a polygon and gluing its perimeter shut, and the reverse process of cutting open a polytope and unfolding it to a polygon. We explore basic enumeration questions in both directions: Given a polygon, how many foldings are there? Given a polytope, how many unfoldings are there to simple polygons? Throughout we give special attention to convex polygons, and to regular polygons. We show that every convex polygon folds to an infinite number of distinct polytopes, but that their number of combinatorially distinct gluings is polynomial. There are, however, simple polygons with an exponential number of distinct gluings. In the reverse direction, we show that there are polytopes with an exponential number of distinct cuttings that lead to simple unfoldings. We establish necessary conditions for a polytope to have convex unfoldings, implying, for example, that among the Platonic solids, only the tetrahedron has a convex unfolding. We provide an inventory of the polytopes that may unfold to regular polygons, showing that, for n>6, there is essentially only one class of such polytopes.Comment: 54 pages, 33 figure

Ununfoldable Polyhedra with Convex Faces

Unfolding a convex polyhedron into a simple planar polygon is a well-studied problem. In this paper, we study the limits of unfoldability by studying nonconvex polyhedra with the same combinatorial structure as convex polyhedra. In particular, we give two examples of polyhedra, one with 24 convex faces and one with 36 triangular faces, that cannot be unfolded by cutting along edges. We further show that such a polyhedron can indeed be unfolded if cuts are allowed to cross faces. Finally, we prove that ``open'' polyhedra with triangular faces may not be unfoldable no matter how they are cut.Comment: 14 pages, 9 figures, LaTeX 2e. To appear in Computational Geometry: Theory and Applications. Major revision with two new authors, solving the open problem about triangular face

Reconstructing Geometric Structures from Combinatorial and Metric Information

In this dissertation, we address three reconstruction problems. First, we address the problem of reconstructing a Delaunay triangulation from a maximal planar graph. A maximal planar graph G is Delaunay realizable if there exists a realization of G as a Delaunay triangulation on the plane. Several classes of graphs with particular graph-theoretic properties are known to be Delaunay realizable. One such class of graphs is outerplanar graph. In this dissertation, we present a new proof that an outerplanar graph is Delaunay realizable. Given a convex polyhedron P and a point s on the surface (the source), the ridge tree or cut locus is a collection of points with multiple shortest paths from s on the surface of P. If we compute the shortest paths from s to all polyhedral vertices of P and cut the surface along these paths, we obtain a planar polygon called the shortest path star (sp-star) unfolding. It is known that for any convex polyhedron and a source point, the ridge tree is contained in the sp-star unfolding polygon [8]. Given a combinatorial structure of a ridge tree, we show how to construct the ridge tree and the sp-star unfolding in which it lies. In this process, we address several problems concerning the existence of sp-star unfoldings on specified source point sets. Finally, we introduce and study a new variant of the sp-star unfolding called (geodesic) star unfolding. In this unfolding, we cut the surface of the convex polyhedron along a set of non-crossing geodesics (not-necessarily the shortest). We study its properties and address its realization problem. Finally, we consider the following problem: given a geodesic star unfolding of some convex polyhedron and a source point, how can we derive the sp-star unfolding of the same polyhedron and the source point? We introduce a new algorithmic operation and perform experiments using that operation on a large number of geodesic star unfolding polygons. Experimental data provides strong evidence that the successive applications of this operation on geodesic star unfoldings will lead us to the sp-star unfolding

Star Unfolding Convex Polyhedra via Quasigeodesic Loops

We extend the notion of star unfolding to be based on a quasigeodesic loop Q rather than on a point. This gives a new general method to unfold the surface of any convex polyhedron P to a simple (non-overlapping), planar polygon: cut along one shortest path from each vertex of P to Q, and cut all but one segment of Q.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures. v2 improves the description of cut locus, and adds references. v3 improves two figures and their captions. New version v4 offers a completely different proof of non-overlap in the quasigeodesic loop case, and contains several other substantive improvements. This version is 23 pages long, with 15 figure

Computational Geometry Column 34

Problems presented at the open-problem session of the 14th Annual ACM Symposium on Computational Geometry are listed

Inferring periodic orbits from spectra of simple shaped micro-lasers

Dielectric micro-cavities are widely used as laser resonators and characterizations of their spectra are of interest for various applications. We experimentally investigate micro-lasers of simple shapes (Fabry-Perot, square, pentagon, and disk). Their lasing spectra consist mainly of almost equidistant peaks and the distance between peaks reveals the length of a quantized periodic orbit. To measure this length with a good precision, it is necessary to take into account different sources of refractive index dispersion. Our experimental and numerical results agree with the superscar model describing the formation of long-lived states in polygonal cavities. The limitations of the two-dimensional approximation are briefly discussed in connection with micro-disks.Comment: 13 pages, 19 figures, accepted for publication in Physical Review