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\uı's theorem from convex geometry; we study several related complexity classifications in the real hierarchy based on other results from convex geometry.

Publication Details

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ArXiv.org
Published
2025-06-23
Primary Topic
Computational Geometry and Mesh Generation
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article
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article

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

ArXiv.org
Computational Geometry and Mesh Generation
article

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

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Abstract

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\uı's theorem from convex geometry; we study several related complexity classifications in the real hierarchy based on other results from convex geometry.

ArXiv.org
Openalex Percentile: Top 33%
Computational Geometry and Mesh Generation
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How Hard is it to be a Star? Convex Geometry and the Real Hierarchy · ArXiv.org (2025) | TGRS Research Map | TGRS