English

Topological Art in Simple Galleries

Computational Geometry 2023-05-31 v2 Algebraic Topology

Abstract

Let PP be a simple polygon, then the art gallery problem is looking for a minimum set of points (guards) that can see every point in PP. We say two points a,bPa,b\in P can see each other if the line segment seg(a,b)seg(a,b) is contained in PP. We denote by V(P)V(P) the family of all minimum guard placements. The Hausdorff distance makes V(P)V(P) a metric space and thus a topological space. We show homotopy-universality, that is for every semi-algebraic set SS there is a polygon PP such that V(P)V(P) is homotopy equivalent to SS. Furthermore, for various concrete topological spaces TT, we describe instances II of the art gallery problem such that V(I)V(I) is homeomorphic to TT.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2108.04007,
  title  = {Topological Art in Simple Galleries},
  author = {Daniel Bertschinger and Nicolas El Maalouly and Tillmann Miltzow and Patrick Schnider and Simon Weber},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2108.04007},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

32 pages, 36 figures. For associated GeoGebra files, see source files. For associated video, see http://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLh3Niobwkd8pZcSF_Al7e2eeZ-8vqNm-b . Version v2 adds some additional details and references to publications that appeared after v1

R2 v1 2026-06-24T04:56:55.300Z