A fast algorithm for computing sparse visibility graphs

AnO(¦E¦log²n) algorithm is presented to construct the visibility graph for a collection ofn nonintersecting line segments, where ¦E¦ is the number of edges in the visibility graph. This algorithm is much faster than theO(n²)-time andO(n²)-space algorithms by Asanoet al., and by Welzl, on sparse visibility graphs. Thus we partially resolve an open problem raised by Welzl. Further, our algorithm uses onlyO(n) working storage.