On the Union of Fat Tetrahedra in Three Dimensions
We show that the combinatorial complexity of the union of n "fat" tetrahedra in 3-space (i.e., tetrahedra all of whose solid angles are at least some fixed constant) of arbitrary sizes, is O(n(2+epsilon)), for any epsilon > 0; the bound is almost tight in the worst case, thus almost settling a conjecture of Pach et al. [2003]. Our result extends, in a significant way, the result of Pach et al. [2003] for the restricted case of nearly congruent cubes. The analysis uses cuttings, combined with the Dobkin-Kirkpatrick hierarchical decomposition of convex polytopes, in order to partition space into subcells, so that, on average, the overwhelming majority of the tetrahedra intersecting a subcell Delta behave as fat dihedral wedges in Delta. As an immediate corollary, we obtain that the combinatorial complexity of the union of n cubes in R(3), having arbitrary side lengths, is O(n(2+epsilon)), for any epsilon > 0 (again, significantly extending the result of Pach et al. [2003]). Finally, our analysis can easily be extended to yield a nearly quadratic bound on the complexity of the union of arbitrarily oriented fat triangular prisms ( whose cross-sections have arbitrary sizes) in R(3).
hierarchical decomposition of convex polytopes algorithms theory union of simply-shaped bodies (1/r)-cuttings curve-sensitive cuttings