Filling a triangulation of the 2-sphere

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Doyle, Peter, Ellison, Matthew, Wang, Zili
Format: Preprint
Published: 2023
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author Doyle, Peter
Ellison, Matthew
Wang, Zili
author_facet Doyle, Peter
Ellison, Matthew
Wang, Zili
contents Define the tet-volume of a triangulation of the 2-sphere to be the minimum number of tetrahedra in a 3-complex of which it is the boundary, and let $d(v)$ be the maximum tet-volume for $v$-vertex triangulations. In 1986 Sleator, Tarjan, and Thurston (STT) proved that $d(v) = 2v-10$ holds for large $v$, and conjectured that it holds for all $v \geq 13$. Their proof used hyperbolic polyhedra of large volume. They suggested using more general notions of volume instead. In work that was all but lost, Mathieu and Thurston used this approach to outline a combinatorial proof of the STT asymptotic result. Here we use a much simplified version of their approach to prove the full conjecture. This implies STT's weaker conjecture, proven by Pournin in 2014, characterizing the maximum rotation distance between trees.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2303_10773
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Filling a triangulation of the 2-sphere
Doyle, Peter
Ellison, Matthew
Wang, Zili
Combinatorics
Data Structures and Algorithms
Geometric Topology
Define the tet-volume of a triangulation of the 2-sphere to be the minimum number of tetrahedra in a 3-complex of which it is the boundary, and let $d(v)$ be the maximum tet-volume for $v$-vertex triangulations. In 1986 Sleator, Tarjan, and Thurston (STT) proved that $d(v) = 2v-10$ holds for large $v$, and conjectured that it holds for all $v \geq 13$. Their proof used hyperbolic polyhedra of large volume. They suggested using more general notions of volume instead. In work that was all but lost, Mathieu and Thurston used this approach to outline a combinatorial proof of the STT asymptotic result. Here we use a much simplified version of their approach to prove the full conjecture. This implies STT's weaker conjecture, proven by Pournin in 2014, characterizing the maximum rotation distance between trees.
title Filling a triangulation of the 2-sphere
topic Combinatorics
Data Structures and Algorithms
Geometric Topology
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.10773