Article ID Journal Published Year Pages File Type
437499 Theoretical Computer Science 2011 12 Pages PDF
Abstract

The Inscribed Square Conjecture has been open since 1911. It states that any plane Jordan curve J contains four points on a non-degenerate square. In this article two different discrete versions of this conjecture are introduced and proved. The first version is in the field of digital topology: it is proved that the conjecture holds for digital simple closed 4-curves, and that it is false for 8-curves. The second one is in the topological graph theory field: it is proved that any cycle of the grid Z2 contains an inscribed square with integer vertices. The proofs are based on a theorem due to Pak. An infinite family of 4-curves in the digital plane containing a single non-degenerate inscribed square is introduced as well as a second infinite family containing one 4-curve with exactly n inscribed squares for each positive integer value of n. Finally an algorithm with time complexity O(n2) is given to find inscribed squares in simple digital curves.

Related Topics
Physical Sciences and Engineering Computer Science Computational Theory and Mathematics