Related papers: The complexity of pinning simple multiloops
We show that if $K$ is a knot in $S^3$ and $\Sigma$ is a bridge sphere for $K$ with high distance and $2n$ punctures, the number of perturbations of $K$ required to interchange the two balls bounded by $\Sigma$ via an isotopy is $n$. We…
A holomorphic germ \Phi: (C^2, 0) \to (C^3, 0), singular only at the origin, induces at the links level an immersion of S^3 into S^5. The regular homotopy type of such immersions are determined by their Smale invariant, defined up to a sign…
We consider the general problem of blocking all solutions of some given combinatorial problem with only few elements. For example, the problem of destroying all maximum cliques of a given graph by forbidding only few vertices. Problems of…
The multiway-cut problem is, given a weighted graph and k >= 2 terminal nodes, to find a minimum-weight set of edges whose removal separates all the terminals. The problem is NP-hard, and even NP-hard to approximate within 1+delta for some…
We show that, if $\Gamma$ is a point group of $\mathbb{R}^{k+1}$ of order two for some $k\geq 2$ and $\mathcal S$ is a $k$-pseudomanifold which has a free automorphism of order two, then either $\mathcal S$ has a $\Gamma$-symmetric…
We prove the three embeddedness results as follows. $({\rm i})$ Let $\Gamma_{2m+1}$ be a piecewise geodesic Jordan curve with $2m+1$ vertices in $\mathbb{R}^n$, where $m$ is an integer $\geq2$. Then the total curvature of…
We prove a "gluing" theorem for monotone homotopies; a monotone homotopy is a homotopy through simple contractible closed curves which themselves are pairwise disjoint. We show that two monotone homotopies which have appropriate overlap can…
We consider a natural variation of the concept of stabbing a segment by a simple polygon: a segment is stabbed by a simple polygon $\mathcal{P}$ if at least one of its two endpoints is contained in $\mathcal{P}$. A segment set $S$ is…
A ternary permutation constraint satisfaction problem (CSP) is specified by a subset Pi of the symmetric group S_3. An instance of such a problem consists of a set of variables V and a set of constraints C, where each constraint is an…
Fix a finite group $G$. We study the computational complexity of counting problems of the following flavor: given a group $\Gamma$, count the number of homomorphisms $\Gamma \to G$. Our first result establishes that this problem is…
\noindent Given a Riemann surface $M$, the \emph{complexity} of a branched cover of $M$ to the Riemann sphere $S^2$, of degree $d$ and with branching set of cardinality $n \geq 3$, is defined as $d$ times the hyperbolic area of the…
This paper addresses several isotopy problems on $4$-manifolds. First, we classify the isotopy classes of embeddings of $\Sigma$ in $\Sigma\times S^2$ that are geometrically dual to $\{\mbox{pt}\}\times S^2$, where $\Sigma$ is a closed…
The Subgraph Matching (SM) problem consists of finding all the embeddings of a given small graph, called the query, into a large graph, called the target. The SM problem has been widely studied for simple graphs, i.e. graphs where there is…
We consider the problem of assigning radii to a given set of points in the plane, such that the resulting set of circles is connected, and the sum of radii is minimized. We show that the problem is polynomially solvable if a connectivity…
Determining if an input undirected graph is Hamiltonian, i.e., if it has a cycle that visits every vertex exactly once, is one of the most famous NP-complete problems. We consider the following generalization of Hamiltonian cycles: for a…
A set of proper subgroups is a covering for a group if its union is the whole group. The minimal number of subgroups needed to cover $G$ is called the covering number of $G$, denoted by $\sigma(G)$. Determining $\sigma(G)$ is an open…
We determine the effective behavior of a class of composites in finite-strain crystal plasticity, based on a variational model for materials made of fine parallel layers of two types. While one component is completely rigid in the sense…
We classify immersions $f$ of $S^1$ in a $2$-manifold $M$ in terms of elementary invariants: the parity $S(f)$ of the number of double points of a self-transverse $C^1$-approximation of $f$, and the turning number $T(e\bar f)$ of the…
It is known that any periodic map of order $n$ on a closed oriented surface of genus $g$ can be equivariantly embedded into $S^m$ for some $m$. In the orientable and smooth category, we determine the smallest possible $m$ when $n\geq 3g$.…
A graph $G$ is weakly $\gamma$-closed if every induced subgraph of $G$ contains one vertex $v$ such that for each non-neighbor $u$ of $v$ it holds that $|N(u)\cap N(v)|<\gamma$. The weak closure $\gamma(G)$ of a graph, recently introduced…