We define the notion of a
well-separated pair decomposition
of points in
d
-dimensional space. We then develop efficient sequential and parallel algorithms for computing such a decomposition. We apply the resulting decomposition to the efficient computation of
k
-nearest neighbors and
n
-body potential fields.
In this paper we show that it is impossible to solve a number of “natural” two-dimensional geometric problems in polylog time with a polynomial number of processors (unless P=NC). Thus, we disprove a popular belief that there are no natural P-complete geometric problems in the plane. The problems we address include instances of polygon triangulation, planar partitioning, and geometric layering. Our results are based on non-trivial reductions from the monotone circuit value and planar circuit value problems.
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