24 research outputs found
The Length of a Minimal Tree With a Given Topology: generalization of Maxwell Formula
The classic Maxwell formula calculates the length of a planar locally minimal
binary tree in terms of coordinates of its boundary vertices and directions of
incoming edges. However, if an extreme tree with a given topology and a
boundary has degenerate edges, then the classic Maxwell formula cannot be
applied directly, to calculate the length of the extreme tree in this case it
is necessary to know which edges are degenerate. In this paper we generalize
the Maxwell formula to arbitrary extreme trees in a Euclidean space of
arbitrary dimension. Now to calculate the length of such a tree, there is no
need to know either what edges are degenerate, or the directions of
nondegenerate boundary edges. The answer is the maximum of some special linear
function on the corresponding compact convex subset of the Euclidean space
coinciding with the intersection of some cylinders.Comment: 6 ref