Fine-Grained Complexity Theory: Conditional Lower Bounds for Computational Geometry

Fine-grained complexity theory is the area of theoretical computer sciencethat proves conditional lower bounds based on the Strong Exponential TimeHypothesis and similar conjectures. This area has been thriving in the lastdecade, leading to conditionally best-possible algorithms for a wide variety ofproblems on graphs, strings, numbers etc. This article is an introduction tofine-grained lower bounds in computational geometry, with a focus on lowerbounds for polynomial-time problems based on the Orthogonal Vectors Hypothesis.Specifically, we discuss conditional lower bounds for nearest neighbor searchunder the Euclidean distance and Fr\'echet distance.