Computing the number of realisations of a rigid graph

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Dewar, Sean, Grasegger, Georg, Schicho, Josef, Tewari, Ayush Kumar, Warren, Audie
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866911193872990208
author Dewar, Sean
Grasegger, Georg
Schicho, Josef
Tewari, Ayush Kumar
Warren, Audie
author_facet Dewar, Sean
Grasegger, Georg
Schicho, Josef
Tewari, Ayush Kumar
Warren, Audie
contents A graph is said to be rigid if, given a generic realisation of the graph as a bar-and-joint framework in the plane, there exist only finitely many other realisations of the graph with the same edge lengths modulo rotations, reflections and translations. In recent years there has been an increase of interest in determining exactly what this finite amount is, hereon known as the realisation number. Combinatorial algorithms for the realisation number were previously known for the special cases of minimally rigid and redundantly rigid graphs. In this paper we provide a combinatorial algorithm to compute the realisation number of any rigid graph, and thus solve an open problem of Jackson and Owen. We then adapt our algorithm to compute: (i) spherical realisation numbers, and (ii) the number of rank-3 PSD matrix completions of a generic partial matrix.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_02988
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Computing the number of realisations of a rigid graph
Dewar, Sean
Grasegger, Georg
Schicho, Josef
Tewari, Ayush Kumar
Warren, Audie
Combinatorics
Algebraic Geometry
Metric Geometry
52C25 (Primary) 05C10, 68R12, 14C17 (Secondary)
A graph is said to be rigid if, given a generic realisation of the graph as a bar-and-joint framework in the plane, there exist only finitely many other realisations of the graph with the same edge lengths modulo rotations, reflections and translations. In recent years there has been an increase of interest in determining exactly what this finite amount is, hereon known as the realisation number. Combinatorial algorithms for the realisation number were previously known for the special cases of minimally rigid and redundantly rigid graphs. In this paper we provide a combinatorial algorithm to compute the realisation number of any rigid graph, and thus solve an open problem of Jackson and Owen. We then adapt our algorithm to compute: (i) spherical realisation numbers, and (ii) the number of rank-3 PSD matrix completions of a generic partial matrix.
title Computing the number of realisations of a rigid graph
topic Combinatorics
Algebraic Geometry
Metric Geometry
52C25 (Primary) 05C10, 68R12, 14C17 (Secondary)
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.02988