On Searching for Small Kochen-Specker Vector Systems (extended version)

Kochen-Specker (KS) vector systems are sets of vectors in R^3 with the property that it is impossible to assign 0s and 1s to the vectors in such a way that no two orthogonal vectors are assigned 0 and no three mutually orthogonal vectors are assigned 1. The existence of such sets forms the basis of the Kochen-Specker and Free Will theorems. Currently, the smallest known KS vector system contains 31 vectors. In this paper, we establish a lower bound of 18 on the size of any KS vector system. This requires us to consider a mix of graph-theoretic and topological embedding problems, which we investigate both from theoretical and practical angles. We propose several algorithms to tackle these problems and report on extensive experiments. At the time of writing, a large gap remains between the best lower and upper bounds for the minimum size of KS vector systems.Comment: 16 pages. Extended version of "On Searching for Small Kochen-Specker Vector Systems" published in WG 201

On complexity of mutlidistance graph recognition in R1\mathbb{R}^1

Let $\mathcal{A}$ be a set of positive numbers. A graph $G$ is called an $\mathcal{A}$-embeddable graph in $\mathbb{R}^d$ if the vertices of $G$ can be positioned in $\mathbb{R}^d$ so that the distance between endpoints of any edge is an element of $\mathcal{A}$. We consider the computational problem of recognizing $\mathcal{A}$-embeddable graphs in $\mathbb{R}^1$ and classify all finite sets $\mathcal{A}$ by complexity of this problem in several natural variations.Comment: 38 pages, 9 figures. Extended abstract published in EUROCOMB'17 proceedings in Electronic Notes in Discrete Mathematics (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1571065317302354

On the Complexity of Embeddable Simplicial Complexes

This thesis addresses the question of the maximal number of $d$-simplices for a simplicial complex which is embeddable into $\mathbb{R}^r$ for some $d \leq r \leq 2d$. A lower bound of $f_d(C_{r + 1}(n)) = \Omega(n^{\lceil\frac{r}{2}\rceil})$, which might even be sharp, is given by the cyclic polytopes. To find an upper bound for the case $r=2d$ we look for forbidden subcomplexes. A generalization of the theorem of van Kampen and Flores yields those. Then the problem can be tackled with the methods of extremal hypergraph theory, which gives an upper bound of $O(n^{d+1-\frac{1}{3^d}})$. We also consider whether these bounds can be improved by simple means.Comment: Diplom thesis, FU Berlin, 200

On links of vertices in simplicial dd-complexes embeddable in the euclidean 2d2d-space

We consider $d$-dimensional simplicial complexes which can be PL embedded in the $2d$-dimensional euclidean space. In short, we show that in any such complex, for any three vertices, the intersection of the link-complexes of the vertices is linklessly embeddable in the $(2d-1)$-dimensional euclidean space. These considerations lead us to a new upper bound on the total number of $d$-simplices in an embeddable complex in $2d$-space with $n$ vertices, improving known upper bounds, for all $d \geq 2$. Moreover, the bound is also true for the size of $d$-complexes linklessly embeddable in the $(2d+1)$-dimensional space

Inapproximability for metric embeddings into R^d

We consider the problem of computing the smallest possible distortion for embedding of a given n-point metric space into R^d, where d is fixed (and small). For d=1, it was known that approximating the minimum distortion with a factor better than roughly n^(1/12) is NP-hard. From this result we derive inapproximability with factor roughly n^(1/(22d-10)) for every fixed d\ge 2, by a conceptually very simple reduction. However, the proof of correctness involves a nontrivial result in geometric topology (whose current proof is based on ideas due to Jussi Vaisala). For d\ge 3, we obtain a stronger inapproximability result by a different reduction: assuming P \ne NP, no polynomial-time algorithm can distinguish between spaces embeddable in R^d with constant distortion from spaces requiring distortion at least n^(c/d), for a constant c>0. The exponent c/d has the correct order of magnitude, since every n-point metric space can be embedded in R^d with distortion O(n^{2/d}\log^{3/2}n) and such an embedding can be constructed in polynomial time by random projection. For d=2, we give an example of a metric space that requires a large distortion for embedding in R^2, while all not too large subspaces of it embed almost isometrically

Universal point sets for planar three-tree

For every $n\in \mathbb{N}$, we present a set $S_n$ of $O(n^{3/2}\log n)$ points in the plane such that every planar 3-tree with $n$ vertices has a straight-line embedding in the plane in which the vertices are mapped to a subset of $S_n$. This is the first subquadratic upper bound on the size of universal point sets for planar 3-trees, as well as for the class of 2-trees and serial parallel graphs.Comment: revisio

Framed 44-valent Graph Minor Theory II: Special Minors and New Examples

In the present paper, we proceed the study of framed $4$-graph minor theory initiated in ``Framed $4$-valent Graph Minor Theory I. Intoduction. Planarity Criterion '' and justify the planarity theorem for arbitrary framed 4-graphs; besides, we prove analogous results for embeddability in the projective plane.Comment: 12 page

The Projective Planarity Question for Matroids of 33-Nets and Biased Graphs

A biased graph is a graph with a class of selected circles ("cycles", "circuits"), called "balanced", such that no theta subgraph contains exactly two balanced circles. A biased graph has two natural matroids, the frame matroid and the lift matroid. A classical question in matroid theory is whether a matroid can be embedded in a projective geometry. There is no known general answer, but for matroids of biased graphs it is possible to give algebraic criteria. Zaslavsky has previously given such criteria for embeddability of biased-graphic matroids in Desarguesian projective spaces; in this paper we establish criteria for the remaining case, that is, embeddability in an arbitrary projective plane that is not necessarily Desarguesian. The criteria depend on the embeddability of a quasigroup associated to the graph into the additive or multiplicative loop of a ternary coordinate ring for the plane. A 3-node biased graph is equivalent to an abstract partial 3-net; thus, we have a new algebraic criterion for an abstract 3-net to be realized in a non-Desarguesian projective plane. We work in terms of a special kind of 3-node biased graph called a biased expansion of a triangle. Our results apply to all finite 3-node biased graphs because, as we prove, every such biased graph is a subgraph of a finite biased expansion of a triangle. A biased expansion of a triangle, in turn, is equivalent to an isostrophe class of quasigroups, which is equivalent to a $3$-net. Much is not known about embedding a quasigroup into a ternary ring, so we do not say our criteria are definitive. For instance, it is not even known whether there is a finite quasigroup that cannot be embedded in any finite ternary ring. If there is, then there is a finite rank-3 matroid (of the corresponding biased expansion) that cannot be embedded in any finite projective plane---a presently unsolved problem.Comment: There are 2 figures. formerly part of arXiv:1608.06021v

Embedding Four-directional Paths on Convex Point Sets

A directed path whose edges are assigned labels "up", "down", "right", or "left" is called \emph{four-directional}, and \emph{three-directional} if at most three out of the four labels are used. A \emph{direction-consistent embedding} of an \mbox{$n$-vertex} four-directional path $P$ on a set $S$ of $n$ points in the plane is a straight-line drawing of $P$ where each vertex of $P$ is mapped to a distinct point of $S$ and every edge points to the direction specified by its label. We study planar direction-consistent embeddings of three- and four-directional paths and provide a complete picture of the problem for convex point sets.Comment: 11 pages, full conference version including all proof

Embedding products of graphs into Euclidean spaces

For any collection of graphs we find the minimal dimension d such that the product of these graphs is embeddable into the d-dimensional Euclidean space. In particular, we prove that the n-th powers of the Kuratowsky graphs are not embeddable into the 2n-dimensional Euclidean space. This is a solution of a problem of Menger from 1929. The idea of the proof is the reduction to a problem from so-called Ramsey link theory: we show that any embedding of L into the (2n-1)-dimensional sphere, where L is the join of n copies of a 4-point set, has a pair of linked (n-1)-dimensional spheres.Comment: in English and in Russian, 5 pages, 2 figures. Minor improvement of exposition, a reference to a popular-science introduction adde