scientific article; zbMATH DE number 1341082
This is a really nice and concrete geometric paper. A linkage is defined to be a foursome \((L,l,V,\mu)\) consisting of a (finite) graph \(L\), a coloring \(l\) of its edges with positive real numbers, a set \(V\) consisting of some of the vertices of the graph, and finally a map \(\mu:V\to\mathbb{C}\). A planar realization of such a linkage is a map \(\varphi\) defined on the set of all vertices of \(L\) into \(\mathbb{C}\) such that \(\varphi\) extends \(\mu\) and \(|\varphi (v)-\varphi(w) |=l(vw)\) for each edge \(vw\) of \(L\). Obviously, the set \(C(L)\) of all planar representations of \(L\) is a real algebraic set, called the configuration space of the linkage \(L\). The author proves that, given any compact real algebraic set \(X\), there exists a linkage \(L\) such that the configuration space \(C(L)\) is a disjoint union of isomorphic copies of \(X\). He attributes this result to Thurston. A slight modification of the definition above yields so-called cabled linkages. A cabled linkage consists of a linkage together with a subset \(F\) of the set of all edges of the linkage. The edges in \(F\) are thought to be flexible, i.e. a planar realization of a cabled linkage is like a realization of an ordinary linkage, but given any edge \(vw\) in \(F\), the condition \(|\varphi(v) -\varphi(w)|=l(vw)\) is replaced by \(|\varphi (v)-\varphi (w)|\leq l(vw)\). The configuration space of such a cabled linkage is a quasialgebraic set, i.e. a set defined by polynomial equations \(p_i(x)=0\) and polynomial inequalities \(q_i(x)\geq 0\). As the main theorem of the paper under review, the author proves that each compact quasialgebraic set is isomorphic to the configuration space of a cabled linkage. This implies that the configuration spaces of arbitrary cabled linkages are exactly the sets of the form \(X\times \mathbb{R}^{2n}\), where \(X\) is a compact quasialgebraic set (up to isomorphism.) The main tool is the concept of a functional linkage. Roughly speaking, given a map \(f:\mathbb{C}^n \to\mathbb{C}^m\), a cabled linkage \(L\) is called a functional linkage for \(f\), if there are vertices \(v_1,\dots, v_n\) and \(w_1,\dots,w_m\) of \(L\) such that for each realization \(\varphi\) of \(L\) with the vertices \(v_i\) at positions \(z_i=\varphi(v_i)\), the vertices \(w_i\) turn out to be located at \((\varphi(w_1), \dots, \varphi(w_m)) =f (z_1,\dots, z_n)\). Hence, the cabled linkage \(L\) computes the function \(f\), at least on some subset of \(\mathbb{C}^m\). The author proves that each polynomial map \(f\) admits a functional linkage. The other theorems of the paper are reduced to this statement. The construction of a functional linkage for a given polynomial function \(f\) is very concrete. First, it is shown that it suffices to construct a functional linkage for each polynomial function in a small list of functions. Finally, he constructs an explicit functional linkage for each function in this list.
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