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Marcus Schaefer

Publications and source records attributed to Marcus Schaefer.

16 recordsLinked to original sources
arXiv2025

Devil's Games and $\text{Q}\mathbb{R}$: Continuous Games complete for the First-Order Theory of the Reals

We introduce the complexity class Quantified Reals ($\text{Q}\mathbb{R}$). Let FOTR be the set of true sentences in the first-order theory of the reals. A language $L$ is in $\text{Q}\mathbb{R}$, if there is a polynomial time reduction from $L$ to FOTR. This seems the first time this complexity class is studied. We show that $\text{Q}\mathbb{R}$ can also be defined using real Turing machines. It is known that deciding FOTR requires at least exponential time unconditionally [Berman, 1980]. We focus on devil's games with two defining properties: (1) Players (human and devil) alternate turns and (2) each turn has a continuum of options. First, we show that FOTRINV is $\text{Q}\mathbb{R}$-complete. FOTRINV has only inversion and addition constraints and all variables are in a compact interval. FOTRINV is a stepping stone for further reductions. Second, we show that the Packing Game is $\text{Q}\mathbb{R}$-complete. In the Packing Game we are given a container and two sets of pieces. One set of pieces for the human and one set for the devil. The human and the devil alternate by placing a piece into the container. Both rotations and translations are allowed. The first player that cannot place a piece loses. Third, we show that the Planar Extension Game is $\text{Q}\mathbb{R}$-complete. We are given a partially drawn plane graph and the human and the devil alternate by placing vertices and the corresponding edges in a straight-line manner. The vertices and edges to be placed are prescribed before hand. The first player that cannot place a vertex loses. Finally, we show that the Order Type Game is $\text{Q}\mathbb{R}$-complete. We are given an order-type together with a linear order. The human and the devil alternate in placing a point in the Euclidean plane following the linear order. The first player that cannot place a point correctly loses.

cs.CG↗
arXiv2025

Recognizing Penny and Marble Graphs is Hard for Existential Theory of the Reals

We show that the recognition problem for penny graphs (contact graphs of unit disks in the plane) is $\exists\mathbb{R}$-complete, that is, computationally as hard as the existential theory of the reals, even if a combinatorial plane embedding of the graph is given. The exact complexity of the penny graph recognition problem has been a long-standing open problem. We lift the penny graph result to three dimensions and show that the recognition problem for marble graphs (contact graphs of unit balls in three dimensions) is $\exists\mathbb{R}$-complete. Finally, we show that rigidity of penny graphs is $\forall\mathbb{R}$-complete and look at grid embeddings of penny graphs that are trees.

cs.CG↗
arXiv2025

How Hard is it to be a Star? Convex Geometry and the Real Hierarchy

A set is star-shaped if there is a point in the set that can see every other point in the set in the sense that the line-segment connecting the points lies within the set. We show that testing whether a non-empty compact smooth region is star-shaped is $\forall\mathbb{R}$-complete. Since the obvious definition of star-shapedness has logical form $\exists\forall$, this is a somewhat surprising result, based on Krasnosel'ski\u{\i}'s theorem from convex geometry; we study several related complexity classifications in the real hierarchy based on other results from convex geometry.

cs.CG↗
arXiv2024

The Existential Theory of the Reals as a Complexity Class: A Compendium

We survey the complexity class $\exists \mathbb{R}$, which captures the complexity of deciding the existential theory of the reals. The class $\exists \mathbb{R}$ has roots in two different traditions, one based on the Blum-Shub-Smale model of real computation, and the other following work by Mn\"{e}v and Shor on the universality of realization spaces of oriented matroids. Over the years the number of problems for which $\exists \mathbb{R}$ rather than NP has turned out to be the proper way of measuring their complexity has grown, particularly in the fields of computational geometry, graph drawing, game theory, and some areas in logic and algebra. $\exists \mathbb{R}$ has also started appearing in the context of machine learning, Markov decision processes, and probabilistic reasoning. We have aimed at collecting a comprehensive compendium of problems complete and hard for $\exists \mathbb{R}$, as well as a long list of open problems. The compendium is presented in the third part of our survey; a tour through the compendium and the areas it touches on makes up the second part. The first part introduces the reader to the existential theory of the reals as a complexity class, discussing its history, motivation and prospects as well as some technical aspects.

cs.CC↗
arXiv2022

Beyond the Existential Theory of the Reals

We show that completeness at higher levels of the theory of the reals is a robust notion (under changing the signature and bounding the domain of the quantifiers). This mends recognized gaps in the hierarchy, and leads to stronger completeness results for various computational problems. We exhibit several families of complete problems which can be used for future completeness results in the real hierarchy. As an application we sharpen some results by B\"{u}rgisser and Cucker on the complexity of properties of semialgebraic sets, including the Hausdorff distance problem also studied by Jungeblut, Kleist, and Miltzow.

cs.CC↗
arXiv2022

Spiraling and Folding: The Topological View

For every $n$, we construct two curves in the plane that intersect at least $n$ times and do not form spirals. The construction is in three stages: we first exhibit closed curves on the torus that do not form double spirals, then arcs on the torus that do not form spirals, and finally pairs of planar arcs that do not form spirals. These curves provide a counterexample to a proof of Pach and T\'{o}th concerning string graphs.

math.CO↗
arXiv2021

RAC-drawability is $\exists\mathbb{R}$-complete

A RAC-drawing of a graph is a straight-line drawing in which every crossing occurs at a right-angle. We show that deciding whether a graph has a RAC-drawing is as hard as the existential theory of the reals, even if we know that every edge is involved in at most ten crossings and even if the drawing is specified up to isomorphism.

math.CO↗
arXiv2020

Strong Hanani-Tutte for the Torus

If a graph can be drawn on the torus so that every two independent edges cross an even number of times, then the graph can be embedded on the torus.

cs.DM↗
arXiv2019

Link Crossing Number is NP-hard

We show that determining the crossing number of a link is NP-hard. For some weaker notions of link equivalence, we also show NP-completeness.

cs.CG↗
arXiv2018

A Note on the Maximum Rectilinear Crossing Number of Spiders

The maximum rectilinear crossing number of a graph $G$ is the maximum number of crossings in a good straight-line drawing of $G$ in the plane. In a good drawing any two edges intersect in at most one point (counting endpoints), no three edges have an interior point in common, and edges do not contain vertices in their interior. A spider is a subdivision of $K_{1,k}$. We provide both upper and lower bounds for the maximum rectilinear crossing number of spiders. While there are not many results on the maximum rectilinear crossing numbers of infinite families of graphs, our methods can be used to find the exact maximum rectilinear crossing number of $K_{1,k}$ where each edge is subdivided exactly once. This is a first step towards calculating the maximum rectilinear crossing number of arbitrary trees.

math.CO↗
arXiv2016

The Complexity of Tensor Rank

We show that determining the rank of a tensor over a field has the same complexity as deciding the existential theory of that field. This implies earlier NP-hardness results by H{\aa}stad~\cite{H90}. The hardness proof also implies an algebraic universality result.

cs.CC↗
arXiv2016

Hanani-Tutte for Radial Planarity II

A drawing of a graph $G$ is radial if the vertices of $G$ are placed on concentric circles $C_1, \ldots, C_k$ with common center $c$, and edges are drawn radially: every edge intersects every circle centered at $c$ at most once. $G$ is radial planar if it has a radial embedding, that is, a crossing-free radial drawing. If the vertices of $G$ are ordered or partitioned into ordered levels (as they are for leveled graphs), we require that the assignment of vertices to circles corresponds to the given ordering or leveling. A pair of edges $e$ and $f$ in a graph is independent if $e$ and $f$ do not share a vertex. We show that a graph $G$ is radial planar if $G$ has a radial drawing in which every two independent edges cross an even number of times; the radial embedding has the same leveling as the radial drawing. In other words, we establish the strong Hanani-Tutte theorem for radial planarity. This characterization yields a very simple algorithm for radial planarity testing.

cs.CG↗
arXiv2014

Drawing Partially Embedded and Simultaneously Planar Graphs

We investigate the problem of constructing planar drawings with few bends for two related problems, the partially embedded graph problem---to extend a straight-line planar drawing of a subgraph to a planar drawing of the whole graph---and the simultaneous planarity problem---to find planar drawings of two graphs that coincide on shared vertices and edges. In both cases we show that if the required planar drawings exist, then there are planar drawings with a linear number of bends per edge and, in the case of simultaneous planarity, a constant number of crossings between every pair of edges. Our proofs provide efficient algorithms if the combinatorial embedding of the drawing is given. Our result on partially embedded graph drawing generalizes a classic result by Pach and Wenger which shows that any planar graph can be drawn with a linear number of bends per edge if the location of each vertex is fixed.

cs.CG↗
arXiv2013

Picking Planar Edges; or, Drawing a Graph with a Planar Subgraph

Given a graph $G$ and a subset $F \subseteq E(G)$ of its edges, is there a drawing of $G$ in which all edges of $F$ are free of crossings? We show that this question can be solved in polynomial time using a Hanani-Tutte style approach. If we require the drawing of $G$ to be straight-line, and allow at most one crossing along each edge in $F$, the problem turns out to be as hard as the existential theory of the real numbers.

cs.CG↗
arXiv2013

Multi-Sided Boundary Labeling

In the Boundary Labeling problem, we are given a set of $n$ points, referred to as sites, inside an axis-parallel rectangle $R$, and a set of $n$ pairwise disjoint rectangular labels that are attached to $R$ from the outside. The task is to connect the sites to the labels by non-intersecting rectilinear paths, so-called leaders, with at most one bend. In this paper, we study the Multi-Sided Boundary Labeling problem, with labels lying on at least two sides of the enclosing rectangle. We present a polynomial-time algorithm that computes a crossing-free leader layout if one exists. So far, such an algorithm has only been known for the cases in which labels lie on one side or on two opposite sides of $R$ (here a crossing-free solution always exists). The case where labels may lie on adjacent sides is more difficult. We present efficient algorithms for testing the existence of a crossing-free leader layout that labels all sites and also for maximizing the number of labeled sites in a crossing-free leader layout. For two-sided boundary labeling with adjacent sides, we further show how to minimize the total leader length in a crossing-free layout.

cs.CG↗