How many times can two minimum spanning trees cross?
Computational Geometry
2026-01-29 v1 Combinatorics
Abstract
Let be a generic set of points in the plane, and let be a coloring of in two colors. We are interested in the number of crossings between the minimum spanning trees (MSTs) of and , denoted by . We define the \emph{bicolored MST crossing number} of , denoted by , as . We prove a linear upper bound for when is generic. If is dense or in convex position, we provide linear lower bounds. Lastly, if is chosen uniformly at random from the unit square and is colored uniformly at random, we prove that the expected value of is linear.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2601.20060,
title = {How many times can two minimum spanning trees cross?},
author = {Todor Antić and Morteza Saghafian and Maria Saumell and Felix Schröder and Josef Tkadlec and Pavel Valtr},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2601.20060},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
27 pages, 16 figures, to appear in proceedings of LATIN 2026