English

Globally rigid graphs are fully reconstructible

Metric Geometry 2025-02-14 v2 Combinatorics

Abstract

A dd-dimensional framework is a pair (G,p)(G,p), where G=(V,E)G=(V,E) is a graph and pp is a map from VV to Rd\mathbb{R}^d. The length of an edge uvEuv\in E in (G,p)(G,p) is the distance between p(u)p(u) and p(v)p(v). The framework is said to be globally rigid in Rd\mathbb{R}^d if the graph GG and its edge lengths uniquely determine (G,p)(G,p), up to congruence. A graph GG is called globally rigid in Rd\mathbb{R}^d if every dd-dimensional generic framework (G,p)(G,p) is globally rigid. In this paper, we consider the problem of reconstructing a graph from the set of edge lengths arising from a generic framework. Roughly speaking, a graph GG is strongly reconstructible in Cd\mathbb{C}^d if the set of (unlabeled) edge lengths of any generic framework (G,p)(G,p) in dd-space, along with the number of vertices of GG, uniquely determine both GG and the association between the edges of GG and the set of edge lengths. It is known that if GG is globally rigid in Rd\mathbb{R}^d on at least d+2d+2 vertices, then it is strongly reconstructible in Cd\mathbb{C}^d. We strengthen this result and show that under the same conditions, GG is in fact fully reconstructible in Cd\mathbb{C}^d, which means that the set of edge lengths alone is sufficient to uniquely reconstruct GG, without any constraint on the number of vertices (although still under the assumption that the edge lengths come from a generic realization). As a key step in our proof, we also prove that if GG is globally rigid in Rd\mathbb{R}^d on at least d+2d+2 vertices, then the dd-dimensional generic rigidity matroid of GG is connected. Finally, we provide new families of fully reconstructible graphs and use them to answer some questions regarding unlabeled reconstructibility posed in recent papers.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2105.04363,
  title  = {Globally rigid graphs are fully reconstructible},
  author = {Dániel Garamvölgyi and Steven J. Gortler and Tibor Jordán},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2105.04363},
  year   = {2025}
}