English

Tree covers of size $2$ for the Euclidean plane

Computational Geometry 2025-08-26 v1

Abstract

For a given metric space (P,ϕ)(P,\phi), a tree cover of stretch tt is a collection of trees on PP such that edges (x,y)(x,y) of trees receive length ϕ(x,y)\phi(x,y), and such that for any pair of points u,vPu,v\in P there is a tree TT in the collection such that the induced graph distance in TT between uu and vv is at most tϕ(u,v).t\phi(u,v). In this paper, we show that, for any set of points PP on the Euclidean plane, there is a tree cover consisting of two trees and with stretch O(1).O(1). Although the problem in higher dimensions remains elusive, we manage to prove that for a slightly stronger variant of a tree cover problem we must have at least (d+1)/2(d+1)/2 trees in any constant stretch tree cover in Rd\mathbb R^d.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2508.16875,
  title  = {Tree covers of size $2$ for the Euclidean plane},
  author = {Artur Bikeev and Andrey Kupavskii and Maxim Turevskii},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2508.16875},
  year   = {2025}
}