985 research outputs found
Area Inequalities for Embedded Disks Spanning Unknotted Curves
We show that a smooth unknotted curve in R^3 satisfies an isoperimetric
inequality that bounds the area of an embedded disk spanning the curve in terms
of two parameters: the length L of the curve and the thickness r (maximal
radius of an embedded tubular neighborhood) of the curve. For fixed length, the
expression giving the upper bound on the area grows exponentially in 1/r^2. In
the direction of lower bounds, we give a sequence of length one curves with r
approaching 0 for which the area of any spanning disk is bounded from below by
a function that grows exponentially with 1/r. In particular, given any constant
A, there is a smooth, unknotted length one curve for which the area of a
smallest embedded spanning disk is greater than A.Comment: 31 pages, 5 figure
The Number of Triangles Needed to Span a Polygon Embedded in R^d
Given a closed polygon P having n edges, embedded in R^d, we give upper and
lower bounds for the minimal number of triangles t needed to form a
triangulated PL surface in R^d having P as its geometric boundary. The most
interesting case is dimension 3, where the polygon may be knotted. We use the
Seifert suface construction to show there always exists an embedded surface
requiring at most 7n^2 triangles. We complement this result by showing there
are polygons in R^3 for which any embedded surface requires at least 1/2n^2 -
O(n) triangles. In dimension 2 only n-2 triangles are needed, and in dimensions
5 or more there exists an embedded surface requiring at most n triangles. In
dimension 4 we obtain a partial answer, with an O(n^2) upper bound for embedded
surfaces, and a construction of an immersed disk requiring at most 3n
triangles. These results can be interpreted as giving qualitiative discrete
analogues of the isoperimetric inequality for piecewise linear manifolds.Comment: 16 pages, 4 figures. This paper is a retitled, revised version of
math.GT/020217
Computational Geometry Column 42
A compendium of thirty previously published open problems in computational
geometry is presented.Comment: 7 pages; 72 reference
The Computational Complexity of Knot and Link Problems
We consider the problem of deciding whether a polygonal knot in 3-dimensional
Euclidean space is unknotted, capable of being continuously deformed without
self-intersection so that it lies in a plane. We show that this problem, {\sc
unknotting problem} is in {\bf NP}. We also consider the problem, {\sc
unknotting problem} of determining whether two or more such polygons can be
split, or continuously deformed without self-intersection so that they occupy
both sides of a plane without intersecting it. We show that it also is in NP.
Finally, we show that the problem of determining the genus of a polygonal knot
(a generalization of the problem of determining whether it is unknotted) is in
{\bf PSPACE}. We also give exponential worst-case running time bounds for
deterministic algorithms to solve each of these problems. These algorithms are
based on the use of normal surfaces and decision procedures due to W. Haken,
with recent extensions by W. Jaco and J. L. Tollefson.Comment: 32 pages, 1 figur
Complexity and Algorithms for the Discrete Fr\'echet Distance Upper Bound with Imprecise Input
We study the problem of computing the upper bound of the discrete Fr\'{e}chet
distance for imprecise input, and prove that the problem is NP-hard. This
solves an open problem posed in 2010 by Ahn \emph{et al}. If shortcuts are
allowed, we show that the upper bound of the discrete Fr\'{e}chet distance with
shortcuts for imprecise input can be computed in polynomial time and we present
several efficient algorithms.Comment: 15 pages, 8 figure
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