Steiner reducing sets of minimum weight triangulations: Structure and topology (Q906839)

Considering an initial input set \(X\) of \(n\) points, the author examines the topology of the collection of Steiner points distinguished by the property that adding one such point to the input set results in a minimum weight triangulation of a set of \(n +1\) points with weight less than that of \(X\). Denoting the collection of such points by \(St (X)\), the two main topological results proved here are that the number of connected components of \(St(X)\) can grow linearly in the size of the input set, and \(St(X)\) may fail to be simply connected. This answers a question posed by J. A. De Loera (personal communication, 2003).