Related papers: Complexity of Interlocking Polyominoes
We consider the computation of the volume of the union of high-dimensional geometric objects. While showing that this problem is #P-hard already for very simple bodies (i.e., axis-parallel boxes), we give a fast FPRAS for all objects where…
We introduce the notion of locally consistent system of half-spaces for a real hyperplane arrangement. We embed a sphere in the complexified complement by shifting the real unit sphere into the imaginary direction indicated by the…
Let R be a family of n axis-parallel rectangles with packing number p-1, meaning that among any p of the rectangles, there are two with a non-empty intersection. We show that the union complexity of R is at most O(n+p^2), and that the…
A family ${\mathcal A} \subset {\mathcal P} [n]$ is said to be an antichain if $A \not \subset B$ for all distinct $A,B \in {\mathcal A}$. A classic result of Sperner shows that such families satisfy $|{\mathcal A}| \leq \binom {n}{\lfloor…
A new way of constructing fusion bases (i.e., the set of inequalities governing fusion rules) out of fusion elementary couplings is presented. It relies on a polytope reinterpretation of the problem: the elementary couplings are associated…
The interplay of topological constraints and Coulomb interactions in static and dynamic properties of charged polymers is investigated by numerical simulations and scaling arguments. In the absence of screening, the long-range interaction…
Spiral Galaxies is a pencil-and-paper puzzle played on a grid of unit squares: given a set of points called centers, the goal is to partition the grid into polyominoes such that each polyomino contains exactly one center and is 180{\deg}…
Can you decide if there is a coincidence in the numbers counting two different combinatorial objects? For example, can you decide if two regions in $\mathbb{R}^3$ have the same number of domino tilings? There are two versions of the…
We investigate the following question: how close can two disjoint lattice polytopes contained in a fixed hypercube be? This question stems from various contexts where the minimal distance between such polytopes appears in complexity bounds…
We propose a new contact relation between polytopes. Intuitively, we say that two polytopes are in strong contact if a small enough object can pass from one of them to the other while remaining in their union. In the first half of the paper…
In this paper, we characterise ovoidal cones by their intersection numbers. We first show that a set of points of $\mathrm{PG}(4,q)$ which intersects planes in $1$, $q+1$ or $2q+1$ points is either an ovoidal cone or a parabolic quadric,…
This is a short note that explains a problem on polynomial maps over finite fields for non-experts. The problem is: Do there exist odd polynomial automorphisms over the finite fields with 4,8,16,32,64,... elements? The explanation is very,…
A non-empty subset A of X = X_1 x...x X_d is a (proper) box if A = A_1 x...x A_d and A_i is a (proper) subset of X_i for each i. Suppose that for each pair of boxes A, B and each i, one can only know which of the three states takes place:…
Fullerenes are hollow carbon molecules where each atom is connected to exactly three other atoms, arranged in pentagonal and hexagonal rings. Mathematically, they can be combinatorially modeled as planar, 3-regular graphs with facets…
We introduce twelve polynomial invariants for long virtual knots, called intersection polynomials, extending and refining the three intersection polynomials for virtual knots. They are defined via intersection numbers of cycles on a closed…
A matching is indecomposable if it does not contain a nontrivial contiguous segment of vertices whose neighbors are entirely contained in the segment. We prove a Ramsey-like result for indecomposable matchings, showing that every…
We study betweenness preserving mappings (we call them \emph{monotone}) defined on subsets of the plane. Once the domain is a convex set, such a mapping is either the restriction of a homography, or its image is contained in the union of a…
We study two well-known reconfiguration problems. Given a start and a target configuration of geometric objects in a polygon, we wonder whether we can move the objects from the start configuration to the target configuration while avoiding…
We show that, if a building is endowed with its complete system of apartments, and if each panel is contained in at least four chambers, then the intersection of two apartments can be any convex subcomplex contained in an apartment. This…
This paper presents a framework for abstracting uncertain or non-polynomial components of dynamical systems using polynomial constraints. This enables the application of polynomial-based analysis tools, such as sum-of-squares programming,…