A circle C separates two planar sets if it encloses one of the sets and its
open interior disk does not meet the other set. A separating circle is a
largest one if it cannot be locally increased while still separating the two
given sets. An Theta(n log n) optimal algorithm is proposed to find all largest
circles separating two given sets of line segments when line segments are
allowed to meet only at their endpoints. In the general case, when line
segments may intersect Ω(n2) times, our algorithm can be adapted to
work in O(n alpha(n) log n) time and O(n \alpha(n)) space, where alpha(n)
represents the extremely slowly growing inverse of the Ackermann function.Comment: 14 pages, 3 figures, abstract presented at 8th Canadian Conference on
Computational Geometry, 199