We study spanners in planar domains, including polygonal domains, polyhedral terrain, and planar metrics. Previous work showed that for any constant $ε\in (0,1)$, one could construct a $(2+ε)$-spanner with $O(n\log(n))$ edges (SICOMP 2019), and there is a lower bound of $Ω(n^2)$ edges for any $(2-ε)$-spanner (SoCG 2015). The main open question is whether a linear number of edges suffices and the stretch can be reduced to $2$. We resolve this problem by showing that for stretch $2$, one needs $Ω(n\log n)$ edges, and for stretch $2+ε$ for any fixed $ε\in (0,1)$, $O(n)$ edges are sufficient. Our lower bound is the first super-linear lower bound for stretch $2$.
En route to achieve our result, we introduce the problem of constructing non-Steiner tree covers for metrics, which is a natural variant of the well-known Steiner point removal problem for trees (SODA 2001). Given a tree and a set of terminals in the tree, our goal is to construct a collection of a small number of dominating trees such that for every two points, at least one tree in the collection preserves their distance within a small stretch factor. Here, we identify an unexpected threshold phenomenon around $2$ where a sharp transition from $n$ trees to $Θ(\log n)$ trees and then to $O(1)$ trees happens. Specifically, (i) for stretch $ 2-ε$, one needs $Ω(n)$ trees; (ii) for stretch $2$, $Θ(\log n)$ tree is necessary and sufficient; and (iii) for stretch $2+ε$, a constant number of trees suffice. Furthermore, our lower bound technique for the non-Steiner tree covers of stretch $2$ has further applications in proving lower bounds for two related constructions in tree metrics: reliable spanners and locality-sensitive orderings. Our lower bound for locality-sensitive orderings matches the best upper bound (STOC 2022).
Euclidean Noncrossing Steiner Spanners of Nearly Optimal Sparsity
Indian Institute of Technology Bombay（印度理工学院孟买分校）；Aalto University（阿尔托大学）；Tel Aviv University（特拉维夫大学）；California State University Northridge（北岭加州州立大学）；Tufts University（塔夫茨大学）；Max Planck Institute for Informatics（马克斯·普朗克计算机科学研究所）；University of Copenhagen（哥本哈根大学）
On Subexponential Parameterized Algorithms for Steiner Tree on Intersection Graphs of Geometric Objects
Indian Institute of Technology Bombay（印度理工学院孟买分校）；CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security（CISPA赫尔姆霍兹信息安全中心）；Max Planck Institute for Informatics（马克斯·普朗克计算机科学研究所）
