The arrangement of a finite collection of geometric objects is the decomposition of the space into connected cells induced by them. We survey combinatorial and algorithmic properties of arrangements of arcs in the plane and of surface patches in higher dimensions. We present many applications of arrangements to problems in motion planning, visualization, range searching, molecular modeling, and geometric optimization. Some results involving planar arrangements of arcs have been presented in a companion chapter in this book, and are extended in this chapter to higher dimensions. Work by P.A. was supported by Army Research Office MURI grant DAAH04-96-1-0013, by a Sloan fellowship, by an NYI award, and by a grant from the U.S.-Israeli Binational Science Foundation. Work by M.S. was supported by NSF Grants CCR-91-22103 and CCR-93-11127, by a Max-Planck Research Award, and by grants from the U.S.-Israeli Binational Science Foundation, the Israel Science Fund administered by the Israeli Ac...

We show that n arbitrary circles in the plane can be cut into O(n 3/2+# ) arcs, for any # > 0, such that any pair of arcs intersect at most once. This improves a recent result of Tamaki and Tokuyama [20]. We use this result to obtain improved upper bounds on the number of incidences between m points and n circles. An improved incidence bound is also obtained for graphs of polynomials of any constant maximum degree. 1 Introduction Let P be a finite set of points in the plane and C a finite set of circles. Let I = I(P, C) denote the number of incidences between the points and the circles. Let I(m, n) denote the maximum value of I(P, C), taken over all sets P of m points and sets C of n circles, and let I # (m, n, X) denote the maximum value of I(P, C), taken over all sets P of m points and sets C of n circles with at most X intersecting pairs. In this paper we derive improved upper bounds for I(m, n) and I # (m, n, X). The previous best upper bounds were I(m, n) = O(m 3/5 n 4/5 ...

Abstract. The crossing number of a graph G is the minimum number of crossings in a drawing of G. The determination of the crossing number is an NP-complete problem. We present two general lower bounds for the crossing number, and survey their applications and generalizations. 1

A geometric hypergraph H is a collection of i-dimensional simplices, called hyperedges or, simply, edges, induced by some (i + 1)-tuples of a vertex set V in general position in d-space. The topological structure of geometric graphs, i.e., the case d = 2; i = 1, has been studied extensively, and it proved to be instrumental for the solution of a wide range of problems in combinatorial and computational geometry. They include the k-set problem, proximity questions, bounding the number of incidences between points and lines, designing various efficient graph drawing algorithms, etc. In this paper, we make an attempt to generalize some of these tools to higher dimensions. We will mainly consider extremal problems of the following type. What is the largest number of edges (i-simplices) that a geometric hypergraph of n vertices can have without containing certain forbidden configurations? In particular, we discuss the special cases when the forbidden configurations are k intersecting edges...

Twenty years ago, Ajtai et al. and, independently, Leighton discovered that the crossing number of any graph with v vertices and e> 4v edges is at least ce3 /v2, where c> 0 is an absolute constant. This result, known as the “Crossing Lemma, ” has found many important applications in discrete and computational geometry. It is tight up to a multiplicative constant. Here we improve the best known value of the constant by showing that the result holds with c> 1024/31827> 0.032. The proof has two new ingredients, interesting in their own right. We show that (1) if a graph can be drawn in the plane so that every edge crosses at most three others, then its number of edges cannot exceed 5.5(v − 2); and (2) the crossing number of any graph is at least 7 25 e − (v − 2). Both bounds are tight upt o

The crossing number, cr(G), of a graph G is the least number of crossing points in any drawing of G in the plane. Denote by #(n, e) the minimum of cr(G) taken over all graphs with n vertices and at least e edges. We prove a conjecture of P. Erdos and R. Guy by showing that #(n, e)n 2 /e 3 tends to a positive constant as n ## and n # e # n 2 . Similar results hold for graph drawings on any other surface of fixed genus. We prove better bounds for graphs satisfying some monotone properties. In particular, we show that if G is a graph with n vertices and e # 4n edges, which does not contain a cycle of length four (resp. six), then its crossing number is at least ce 4 /n 3 (resp. ce 5 /n 4 ), where c > 0 is a suitable constant. These results cannot be improved, apart from the value of the constant. This settles a question of M. Simonovits. 1 Introduction Let G be a simple undirected graph with n(G) nodes (vertices) and e(G) edges. A drawing of G in the plane is a m...

It is shown that every set of n points in the plane has an element from which there are at least cn 6/7 other elements at distinct distances, where c > 0 is a constant. This improves earlier results of Erdos, Moser, Beck, Chung, Szemeredi, Trotter, and Szekely. 1.

A geometric path is a graph drawn in the plane such that its vertices are points in general position and its edges... This paper surveys some Turán-type and Ramsey-type extremal problems for geometric graphs, and discusses their generalizations and applications.

Tree decompositions of graphs are of fundamental importance in structural and algorithmic graph theory. Planar decompositions generalise tree decompositions by allowing an arbitrary planar graph to index the decomposition. We prove that every graph that excludes a fixed graph as a minor has a planar decomposition with bounded width and a linear number of bags. The crossing number of a graph is the minimum number of crossings in a drawing of the graph in the plane. We prove that planar decompositions are intimately related to the crossing number. In particular, a graph with bounded degree has linear crossing number if and only if it has a planar decomposition with bounded width and linear order. It follows from the above result about planar decompositions that every graph with bounded degree and an excluded minor has linear crossing number. Analogous results are proved for the convex and rectilinear crossing numbers. In particular, every graph with bounded degree and bounded tree-width has linear convex crossing number, and every K3,3-minor-free graph with bounded degree has linear rectilinear crossing number.

We obtain improved bounds on the complexity of m distinct faces in an arrangement of n pseudo-segments, n circles, or n unit circles. The bounds are worst-case optimal for unit circles; they are also worst-case optimal for the case of pseudo-segments, except when the number of faces is very small, in which case our upper bound is a polylogarithmic factor from the best-known lower bound. For general circles, the bounds nearly coincide with the best-known bounds for the number of incidences between m points and n circles, recently obtained in [9].