English

How Hard is it to be a Star? Convex Geometry and the Real Hierarchy

Computational Geometry 2025-11-20 v2 Computational Complexity

Abstract

A set is star-shaped if there is a point in the set that can see every other point in the set in the sense that the line-segment connecting the points lies within the set. We show that testing whether a non-empty compact smooth region is star-shaped is R\forall\mathbb{R}-complete. Since the obvious definition of star-shapedness has logical form \exists\forall, this is a somewhat surprising result, based on Krasnosel'ski\u{\i}'s theorem from convex geometry; we study several related complexity classifications in the real hierarchy based on other results from convex geometry.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2506.18818,
  title  = {How Hard is it to be a Star? Convex Geometry and the Real Hierarchy},
  author = {Marcus Schaefer and Daniel Štefankovič},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2506.18818},
  year   = {2025}
}