Moser lower bounds

8 Working set algorithm

The computational approach maintains a list of convex polygons, the working set, with the invariant that every Moser set of area below the threshold contains (a rigid motion of) at least one polygon in the list.

Definition 37 Working set
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A working set is a list of convex polygons. Intended invariants:

  1. every polygon in the list contains a copy of the initial worm (Definition 28) under some direct isometry;

  2. every Moser set of area strictly less than \(A_*\) contains a copy of some polygon in the list under some direct isometry.

Invariant 1 is currently a convention maintained by construction; Invariant 2 is the core correctness statement the algorithm preserves.

Definition 38 Initial working set

The initial working set contains exactly the initial worm.

Definition 39 Minimum area

The minimum area in a working set is the minimum of the shoelace areas of its polygons (taken as \(0\) on the empty set).

8.1 Pruning operations

Definition 40 Big set removal

Remove every polygon whose area strictly exceeds \(A_*\). This preserves Invariant 2 because any Moser set of area below \(A_*\) cannot have a polygon of strictly larger area as a subset.

Proposition 41 Big set removal preserves the working set invariant

If a working set satisfies Invariant 2 of Definition 37, so does the result of big set removal.

Definition 42 Superset removal

Remove every polygon \(p\) in the list for which some distinct polygon \(q\) in the list is a subset of \(p\). The smaller \(q\) already witnesses Invariant 2 whenever \(p\) does.

Proposition 43 Superset removal preserves the working set invariant

If a working set satisfies Invariant 2, so does the result of superset removal.

Definition 44 Worm adding

Given an additional worm presented as a convex hull, for each polygon \(p\) in the current working set and for each isometry \(\varphi \) in the discretisation, form the convex hull of \(p\) together with the image under \(\varphi \) of the shrunk hull (to absorb discretisation error). The new working set collects all such unions. This step encodes the requirement that a Moser set must contain this worm in some pose.

Proposition 45 Worm adding preserves the working set invariant

If the isometry discretisation is fine enough relative to the shrink amount, then adding a worm preserves Invariant 2 of Definition 37.

Definition 46 Cleanup and combined add

cleanup is the composition of big-set removal and superset removal. addWormAndCleanup adds a worm and then cleans up.