Combinatorial complexity of signed discs

AbstractLet C+ and C− be two collections of topological discs. The collection of discs is ‘topological’ in the sense that their boundaries are Jordan curves and each pair of Jordan curves intersect at most twice. We prove that the region ∪C+ − ∪C− has combinatorial complexity at most 10n − 30 where p = |C+|, q = |C−| and n = p + q ≥ 5. Moreover, this bound is achievable. We also show less precise bounds that are stated as functions of p and q

Circumscribing Polygons and Polygonizations for Disjoint Line Segments

Given a planar straight-line graph G=(V,E) in R^2, a circumscribing polygon of G is a simple polygon P whose vertex set is V, and every edge in E is either an edge or an internal diagonal of P. A circumscribing polygon is a polygonization for G if every edge in E is an edge of P. We prove that every arrangement of n disjoint line segments in the plane has a subset of size Omega(sqrt{n}) that admits a circumscribing polygon, which is the first improvement on this bound in 20 years. We explore relations between circumscribing polygons and other problems in combinatorial geometry, and generalizations to R^3. We show that it is NP-complete to decide whether a given graph G admits a circumscribing polygon, even if G is 2-regular. Settling a 30-year old conjecture by Rappaport, we also show that it is NP-complete to determine whether a geometric matching admits a polygonization

Reconfiguration of Polygonal Subdivisions via Recombination

Motivated by the problem of redistricting, we study area-preserving reconfigurations of connected subdivisions of a simple polygon. A connected subdivision of a polygon ?, called a district map, is a set of interior disjoint connected polygons called districts whose union equals ?. We consider the recombination as the reconfiguration move which takes a subdivision and produces another by merging two adjacent districts, and by splitting them into two connected polygons of the same area as the original districts. The complexity of a map is the number of vertices in the boundaries of its districts. Given two maps with k districts, with complexity O(n), and a perfect matching between districts of the same area in the two maps, we show constructively that (log n)^O(log k) recombination moves are sufficient to reconfigure one into the other. We also show that ?(log n) recombination moves are sometimes necessary even when k = 3, thus providing a tight bound when k = 3

Bichromatic compatible matchings

Abstract For a set R of n red points and a set B of n blue points, a BR-matching is a non-crossing geometric perfect matching where each segment has one endpoint in B and one in R. Two BRmatchings are compatible if their union is also non-crossing. We prove that, for any two distinct BRmatchings M and M , there exists a sequence of BR-matchings M = M 1 , . . . , M k = M such that M i−1 is compatible with M i . This implies the connectivity of the compatible bichromatic matching graph containing one node for each BR-matching and an edge joining each pair of compatible BR-matchings, thereby answering the open problem posed by Aichholzer et al. in [6]

Bichromatic compatible matchings

ABSTRACT For a set R of n red points and a set B of n blue points, a BR-matching is a non-crossing geometric perfect matching where each segment has one endpoint in B and one in R. Two BR-matchings are compatible if their union is also noncrossing. We prove that, for any two distinct BR-matchings M and M , there exists a sequence of BR-matchings M = M1, . . . , M k = M such that Mi−1 is compatible with Mi. This implies the connectivity of the compatible bichromatic matching graph containing one node for each BR-matching and an edge joining each pair of compatible BR-matchings, thereby answering the open problem posed by Aichholzer et al. in [5]