On intervals and sets of hypermatrices (tensors)

Interval hypermatrices (tensors) are introduced and interval \alpha-hypermatrices are uniformly characterized using a finite set of 'extreme' hypermatrices, where \alpha can be strong P, semi-positive, or positive definite, among many others. It is shown that a symmetric interval is an interval (strictly) copositive-hypermatrix if and only if it is an interval (E) E₀-hypermatrix. It is also shown that an even-order, symmetric interval is an interval positive (semi-) definite-hypermatrix if and only if it is an interval P (P₀)-hypermatrix. Interval hypermatrices are generalized to sets of hyper-matrices, several slice-properties of a set of hypermatrices are introduced and sets of hypermatrices with various slice-properties are uniformly characterized. As a consequence, several slice-properties of a compact, convex set of hyper-matrices are characterized by its extreme points.     

Convexoid and generalized derivations

Let E,F be two Banach spaces and let S be a symmetric norm ideal of L(E,F). For AL(F) and BL(E) the generalized derivation δ_S,A,B is the operator on S that sends X to AX−XB. A bounded linear operator is said to be convexoid if its (algebraic) numerical range coincides with the convex hull of its spectrum. We show that δ_S,A,B is convexoid if and only if A and B are convexoid.     

The projection of the f-vectors of 4-polytopes onto the (E, S)-plane

We characterize all pairs of integers (E, S) such that there exist convex 4-dimensional polytopes with exactly E edges and S 2-dimensional faces.     

On the number of disjoint convex quadrilaterals for a planar point set

For a given planar point set P, consider a partition of P into disjoint convex polygons. In this paper, we estimate the maximum number of convex quadrilaterals in all partitions.     

An approximation algorithm for cutting out convex polygons

We provide an O(logn)-approximation algorithm for the following problem. Given a convex n-gon P, drawn on a convex piece of paper, cut P out of the piece of paper in the cheapest possible way. No polynomial-time approximation algorithm was known for this problem posed in 1985.     

On the generalized Erdös-Szekeres Conjecture — a new upper bound

We prove the following result: For every two natural numbers n and q, n q + 2, there is a natural number E(n, q) satisfying the following:

1. (1) Let S be any set of points in the plane, no three on a line. If |S| E(n, q), then there exists a convex n-gon whose points belong to S, for which the number of points of S in its interior is 0 (mod q).

2. (2) For fixed q, E(n,q) 2^c(q)·n, c(q) is a constant depends on q only.

Part (1) was proved by Bialostocki et al. [2] and our proof is aimed to simplify the original proof. The proof of Part (2) is completely new and reduces the huge upper bound of [2] (a super-exponential bound) to an exponential upper bound.     

Graph rigidity via Euclidean distance matrices

Let G=(V,E,ω) be an incomplete graph with node set V, edge set E, and nonnegative weights ω_ij's on the edges. Let each edge (v_i,v_j) be viewed as a rigid bar, of length ω_ij, which can rotate freely around its end nodes. A realization of a graph G is an assignment of coordinates, in some Euclidean space, to each node of G. In this paper, we consider the problem of determining whether or not a given realization of a graph G is rigid. We show that each realization of G can be epresented as a point in a compact convex set ; and that a generic realization of G is rigid if and only if its corresponding point is a vertex of Ω, i.e., an extreme point with full-dimensional normal cone.     

On the use of augmenting chains in chain packings

In a graph G = (X, E), we assign to each node υ a positive integer b(υ)≤d_G(υ), where d_G(υ) is the degree of υ in G. Let P be a collection of edge-disjoint chains such that no two chains in P have a common endpoint and such that in the partial graph H = (X, E(P)) formed by the edge set E(P) of P we have d_H(υ)≤b(υ) for each node υ. P is called a chain packing.

We extend the augmenting chain theorem of matchings to chain packings and we find an analogue of matching matroids. We also study chain packings by short chains, i.e., chains of lengths one or two. We show that we may restrict ourselves to packings by short chains when we want to find a packing containing a maximum number of chains. We show that the use of augmenting chains fails in general to produce a new short chain packing from an old one, even for bipartite graphs, but that it does do so for the special case of trees. For the case of trees, we also find a min-max result for packings by short chains.     

Convex 4-valent polytopes

Let {p_k}_k≥3 be a sequence of nonnegative integers which satisfies 8 + Σ_k≥3 (k-4) p_k = 0 and p₄ ≥ p₃. Then there is a convex 4-valent polytope P in E³ such that P has exactly p_k k-gons as faces. The inequality p₄ ≥ p₃ is the best possible in the sense that for c < 1 there exist sequences that are not 4-realizable that satisfy both 8 + Σ_{k ≥3} (k - 4) p_k = 0 and p₄ > cp₃. When Σ_{k ≥ 5} p_k ≠ 1, one can make the stronger statement that the sequence {p_k} is 4-reliazable if it satisfies 8 + Σ_{k ≥ 3} (k - 4) p_k = 0 and p₄ ≥ 2Σ_{k ≥ 5} p_k + max{k ¦ p_k ≠ 0}.     

Balanced partitions of two sets of points in the plane

We prove the following theorem. Let m≥2 and q≥1 be integers and let S and T be two disjoint sets of points in the plane such that no three points of ST are on the same line, |S|=2q and |T|=mq. Then ST can be partitioned into q disjoint subsets P₁,P₂,…,P_q satisfying the following two conditions: (i) conv(P_i)∩conv(P_j)=φ for all 1≤i<j≤q, where conv(P_i) denotes the convex hull of P_i; and (ii) |P_i∩S|=2 and |P_i∩T|=m for all 1≤i≤q.     

Length-bounded disjoint paths in planar graphs

The following problem is considered: given: an undirected planar graph G=(V,E) embedded in , distinct pairs of vertices {r₁,s₁},…,{r_k,s_k} of G adjacent to the unbounded face, positive integers b₁,…,b_k and a function ; find: pairwise vertex-disjoint paths P₁,…,P_k such that for each i=1,…,k, P_i is a r_i−s_i-path and the sum of the l-length of all edges in P_i is at most b_i. It is shown that the problem is NP-hard in the strong sense. A pseudo-polynomial-time algorithm is given for the case of k=2.     

An elementary algorithm for reporting intersections of red/blue curve segments

Let E_r and E_b be two sets of x-monotone and non-intersecting curve segments, E=E_rE_b and |E|=n. We give a new sweep-line algorithm that reports the k intersecting pairs of segments of E. Our algorithm uses only three simple predicates that allow to decide if two segments intersect, if a point is left or right to another point, and if a point is above, below or on a segment. These three predicates seem to be the simplest predicates that lead to subquadratic algorithms. Our algorithm is almost optimal in this restricted model of computation. Its time complexity is O(nlogn+kloglogn) and it requires O(n) space.     

Three problems about simple polygons

We give three related algorithmic results concerning a simple polygon P:

1. Improving a series of previous work, we show how to find a largest pair of disjoint congruent disks inside P in linear expected time.

2. As a subroutine for the above result, we show how to find the convex hull of any given subset of the vertices of P in linear worst-case time.

3. More generally, we show how to compute a triangulation of any given subset of the vertices or edges of P in almost linear time.

Class Steiner trees and VLSI-design

We consider a generalized version of the Steiner problem in graphs, motivated by the wire routing phase in physical VLSI design: given a connected, undirected distance graph with required classes of vertices and Steiner vertices, find a shortest connected subgraph containing at least one vertex of each required class. We show that this problem is NP-hard, even if there are no Steiner vertices and the graph is a tree. Moreover, the same complexity result holds if the input class Steiner graph additionally is embedded in a unit grid, if each vertex has degree at most three, and each class consists of no more than three vertices. For similar restricted versions, we prove MAX SNP-hardness and we show that there exists no polynomial-time approximation algorithm with a constant bound on the relative error, unless P = NP. We propose two efficient heuristics computing different approximate solutions in time O(¦E¦+¦V¦log¦V¦) and in time O(c(¦E¦+¦V¦log¦V¦)), respectively, where E is the set of edges in the given graph, V is the set of vertices, and c is the number of classes. We present some promising implementation results. kw]Steiner Tree; Heuristic; Approximation complexity; MAX-SNP-hardness     

Polybasic polyhedra: structure of polyhedra with edge vectors of support size at most 2

It has widely been recognized that submodular set functions and base polyhedra associated with them play fundamental and important roles in combinatorial optimization problems. In the present paper, we introduce a generalized concept of base polyhedron. We consider a class of pointed convex polyhedra in R^V whose edge vectors have supports of size at most 2. We call such a convex polyhedron a polybasic polyhedron. The class of polybasic polyhedra includes ordinary base polyhedra, submodular/supermodular polyhedra, generalized polymatroids, bisubmodular polyhedra, polybasic zonotopes, boundary polyhedra of flows in generalized networks, etc. We show that for a pointed polyhedron PR^V, the following three statements are equivalent:

(1) P is a polybasic polyhedron.

(2) Each face of P with a normal vector of the full support V is obtained from a base polyhedron by a reflection and scalings along axes.

(3) The support function of P is a submodular function on each orthant of R^V.

This reveals the geometric structure of polybasic polyhedra and its relation to submodularity.     

Backward error bounds for approximate Krylov subspaces

Let A be a matrix of order n and let be a subspace of dimension k. In this note, we determine a matrix E of minimal norm such that is a Krylov subspace of A+E.     

The cocharacter sequence of the finite dimensional grassmann algebra

Let V_k be a k-dimensional vector space and let E(V_k) be the finite dimensional Grass-mann algebra over a field F. We compute the sequence of cocharacters of the nilpotent algebra E^*(V_k) = E(V_k) - F.     

Magic Labeling of Disjoint Union Graphs

Let G be a graph with vertex set V (G), edge set E(G) and maximum degree Δ respectively. G is called degree-magic if it admits a labelling of the edges by integers {1, 2, …,|E(G)|} such that for any vertex v the sum of the labels of the edges incident with v is equal to (1+|E(G)|)/2·d(v), where d(v) is the degree of v. Let f be a proper edge coloring of G such that for each vertex v ∈ V (G),|{e:e ∈ E_v, f(e) ≤ Δ/2}|=|{e:e ∈ E_v, f(e) > Δ/2}|, and such an f is called a balanced edge coloring of G. In this paper, we show that if G is a supermagic even graph with a balanced edge coloring and m ≥ 1, then (2m + 1)G is a supermagic graph. If G is a d-magic even graph with a balanced edge coloring and n ≥ 2, then nG is a d-magic graph. Results in this paper generalise some known results.     

Embeddings of the base and bundle isomorphisms

Let π_i :E_i→M, i=1,2, be oriented, smooth vector bundles of rank k over a closed, oriented n-manifold with zero sections s_i :M→E_i. Suppose that U is an open neighborhood of s₁(M) in E₁ and F :U→E₂ a smooth embedding so that π₂Fs₁ :M→M is homotopic to a diffeomorphism f. We show that if k>[(n+1)/2]+1 then E₁ and the induced bundle f^*E₂ are isomorphic as oriented bundles provided that f have degree +1; the same conclusion holds if f has degree −1 except in the case where k is even and one of the bundles does not have a nowhere-zero cross-section. For n≡0(4) and [(n+1)/2]+1<kn we give examples of nonisomorphic oriented bundles E₁ and E₂ of rank k over a homotopy n-sphere with total spaces diffeomorphic with orientation preserved, but such that E₁ and f^*E₂ are not isomorphic oriented bundles. We obtain similar results and counterexamples in the more difficult limiting case where k=[(n+1)/2]+1 and M is a homotopy n-sphere.