Planar L-Shaped Point Set Embeddings of Trees

In this paper we consider planar L-shaped embeddings of trees in point sets, that is, planar drawings where the vertices are mapped to a subset of the given points and where every edge consists of two axis-aligned line segments. We investigate the minimum number m, such that any n vertex tree with maximum degree 4 admits a planar L-shaped embedding in any point set of size m. First we give an upper bound O(n c ) with c = log2 3 1:585 for the general case, and thus answer the question by Di Giacomo et al. [4] whether a subquadratic upper bound exists. Then we introduce the saturation function for trees and show that trees with low saturation can be embedded even more eciently. In particular, we improve the upper bound for caterpillars and extend the class of trees that require only a linear number of points. In addition, we present some probabilistic results for either randomly chosen trees or randomly chosen point sets.