K-outerplanar graph

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A 3-outerplanar graph, the graph of a rhombic dodecahedron. There are four vertices on the outside face, eight vertices on the second layer (light yellow), and two vertices on the third layer (darker yellow). Because of the symmetries of the graph, no other embedding has fewer layers. Rhombic dodecahedral graph layers.svg
A 3-outerplanar graph, the graph of a rhombic dodecahedron. There are four vertices on the outside face, eight vertices on the second layer (light yellow), and two vertices on the third layer (darker yellow). Because of the symmetries of the graph, no other embedding has fewer layers.

In graph theory, a k-outerplanar graph is a planar graph that has a planar embedding in which the vertices belong to at most concentric layers. The outerplanarity index of a planar graph is the minimum value of for which it is -outerplanar.

Contents

Definition

An outerplanar graph (or 1-outerplanar graph) has all of its vertices on the unbounded (outside) face of the graph. A 2-outerplanar graph is a planar graph with the property that, when the vertices on the unbounded face are removed, the remaining vertices all lie on the newly formed unbounded face. And so on.

More formally, a graph is -outerplanar if it has a planar embedding such that, for every vertex, there is an alternating sequence of at most faces and vertices of the embedding, starting with the unbounded face and ending with the vertex, in which each consecutive face and vertex are incident to each other.

Properties and applications

The -outerplanar graphs have treewidth at most . [1] However, some bounded-treewidth planar graphs such as the nested triangles graph may be -outerplanar only for very large , linear in the number of vertices.

Baker's technique covers a planar graph with a constant number of -outerplanar graphs and uses their low treewidth in order to quickly approximate several hard graph optimization problems. [2]

In connection with the GNRS conjecture on metric embedding of minor-closed graph families, the -outerplanar graphs are one of the most general classes of graphs for which the conjecture has been proved. [3]

A conjectured converse of Courcelle's theorem, according to which every graph property recognizable on graphs of bounded treewidth by finite state tree automata is definable in the monadic second-order logic of graphs, has been proven for the -outerplanar graphs. [4]

Recognition

The smallest value of for which a given graph is -outerplanar (its outerplanarity index) can be computed in quadratic time. [5]

Related Research Articles

In graph theory, a planar graph is a graph that can be embedded in the plane, i.e., it can be drawn on the plane in such a way that its edges intersect only at their endpoints. In other words, it can be drawn in such a way that no edges cross each other. Such a drawing is called a plane graph or planar embedding of the graph. A plane graph can be defined as a planar graph with a mapping from every node to a point on a plane, and from every edge to a plane curve on that plane, such that the extreme points of each curve are the points mapped from its end nodes, and all curves are disjoint except on their extreme points.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tree decomposition</span> Mapping of a graph into a tree

In graph theory, a tree decomposition is a mapping of a graph into a tree that can be used to define the treewidth of the graph and speed up solving certain computational problems on the graph.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Outerplanar graph</span> Non-crossing graph with vertices on outer face

In graph theory, an outerplanar graph is a graph that has a planar drawing for which all vertices belong to the outer face of the drawing.

In graph theory, an undirected graph H is called a minor of the graph G if H can be formed from G by deleting edges, vertices and by contracting edges.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chordal graph</span> Graph where all long cycles have a chord

In the mathematical area of graph theory, a chordal graph is one in which all cycles of four or more vertices have a chord, which is an edge that is not part of the cycle but connects two vertices of the cycle. Equivalently, every induced cycle in the graph should have exactly three vertices. The chordal graphs may also be characterized as the graphs that have perfect elimination orderings, as the graphs in which each minimal separator is a clique, and as the intersection graphs of subtrees of a tree. They are sometimes also called rigid circuit graphs or triangulated graphs: a chordal completion of a graph is typically called a triangulation of that graph.

In graph theory, the treewidth of an undirected graph is an integer number which specifies, informally, how far the graph is from being a tree. The smallest treewidth is 1; the graphs with treewidth 1 are exactly the trees and the forests. The graphs with treewidth at most 2 are the series–parallel graphs. The maximal graphs with treewidth exactly k are called k-trees, and the graphs with treewidth at most k are called partial k-trees. Many other well-studied graph families also have bounded treewidth.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Book embedding</span> Graph layout on multiple half-planes

In graph theory, a book embedding is a generalization of planar embedding of a graph to embeddings in a book, a collection of half-planes all having the same line as their boundary. Usually, the vertices of the graph are required to lie on this boundary line, called the spine, and the edges are required to stay within a single half-plane. The book thickness of a graph is the smallest possible number of half-planes for any book embedding of the graph. Book thickness is also called pagenumber, stacknumber or fixed outerthickness. Book embeddings have also been used to define several other graph invariants including the pagewidth and book crossing number.

In graph theory, a path decomposition of a graph G is, informally, a representation of G as a "thickened" path graph, and the pathwidth of G is a number that measures how much the path was thickened to form G. More formally, a path-decomposition is a sequence of subsets of vertices of G such that the endpoints of each edge appear in one of the subsets and such that each vertex appears in a contiguous subsequence of the subsets, and the pathwidth is one less than the size of the largest set in such a decomposition. Pathwidth is also known as interval thickness, vertex separation number, or node searching number.

In graph theory, the planar separator theorem is a form of isoperimetric inequality for planar graphs, that states that any planar graph can be split into smaller pieces by removing a small number of vertices. Specifically, the removal of vertices from an n-vertex graph can partition the graph into disjoint subgraphs each of which has at most vertices.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Halin graph</span> Mathematical tree with cycle through leaves

In graph theory, a Halin graph is a type of planar graph, constructed by connecting the leaves of a tree into a cycle. The tree must have at least four vertices, none of which has exactly two neighbors; it should be drawn in the plane so none of its edges cross, and the cycle connects the leaves in their clockwise ordering in this embedding. Thus, the cycle forms the outer face of the Halin graph, with the tree inside it.

In graph theory, an area of mathematics, an equitable coloring is an assignment of colors to the vertices of an undirected graph, in such a way that

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Degeneracy (graph theory)</span> Measurement of graph sparsity

In graph theory, a k-degenerate graph is an undirected graph in which every subgraph has a vertex of degree at most k: that is, some vertex in the subgraph touches k or fewer of the subgraph's edges. The degeneracy of a graph is the smallest value of k for which it is k-degenerate. The degeneracy of a graph is a measure of how sparse it is, and is within a constant factor of other sparsity measures such as the arboricity of a graph.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Apex graph</span> Graph which can be made planar by removing a single node

In graph theory, a branch of mathematics, an apex graph is a graph that can be made planar by the removal of a single vertex. The deleted vertex is called an apex of the graph. It is an apex, not the apex because an apex graph may have more than one apex; for example, in the minimal nonplanar graphs K5 or K3,3, every vertex is an apex. The apex graphs include graphs that are themselves planar, in which case again every vertex is an apex. The null graph is also counted as an apex graph even though it has no vertex to remove.

In graph theory, a partial k-tree is a type of graph, defined either as a subgraph of a k-tree or as a graph with treewidth at most k. Many NP-hard combinatorial problems on graphs are solvable in polynomial time when restricted to the partial k-trees, for bounded values of k.

In theoretical computer science, Baker's technique is a method for designing polynomial-time approximation schemes (PTASs) for problems on planar graphs. It is named after Brenda Baker, who announced it in a 1983 conference and published it in the Journal of the ACM in 1994.

In the study of graph algorithms, Courcelle's theorem is the statement that every graph property definable in the monadic second-order logic of graphs can be decided in linear time on graphs of bounded treewidth. The result was first proved by Bruno Courcelle in 1990 and independently rediscovered by Borie, Parker & Tovey (1992). It is considered the archetype of algorithmic meta-theorems.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">1-planar graph</span>

In topological graph theory, a 1-planar graph is a graph that can be drawn in the Euclidean plane in such a way that each edge has at most one crossing point, where it crosses a single additional edge. If a 1-planar graph, one of the most natural generalizations of planar graphs, is drawn that way, the drawing is called a 1-plane graph or 1-planar embedding of the graph.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Queue number</span> Invariant in graph theory

In the mathematical field of graph theory, the queue number of a graph is a graph invariant defined analogously to stack number using first-in first-out (queue) orderings in place of last-in first-out (stack) orderings.

In theoretical computer science and metric geometry, the GNRS conjecture connects the theory of graph minors, the stretch factor of embeddings, and the approximation ratio of multi-commodity flow problems. It is named after Anupam Gupta, Ilan Newman, Yuri Rabinovich, and Alistair Sinclair, who formulated it in 2004.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cutwidth</span> Property in graph theory

In graph theory, the cutwidth of an undirected graph is the smallest integer with the following property: there is an ordering of the vertices of the graph, such that every cut obtained by partitioning the vertices into earlier and later subsets of the ordering is crossed by at most edges. That is, if the vertices are numbered , then for every , the number of edges with and is at most .

References

  1. Bodlaender, Hans L. (1998), "A partial -arboretum of graphs with bounded treewidth", Theoretical Computer Science , 209 (1–2): 1–45, doi:10.1016/S0304-3975(97)00228-4, hdl: 1874/18312 , MR   1647486
  2. Baker, B. (1994), "Approximation algorithms for NP-complete problems on planar graphs", Journal of the ACM , 41 (1): 153–180, doi: 10.1145/174644.174650 , S2CID   9706753 .
  3. Chekuri, Chandra; Gupta, Anupam; Newman, Ilan; Rabinovich, Yuri; Sinclair, Alistair (2006), "Embedding -outerplanar graphs into ", SIAM Journal on Discrete Mathematics , 20 (1): 119–136, doi:10.1137/S0895480102417379, MR   2257250, S2CID   13925350
  4. Jaffke, Lars; Bodlaender, Hans L.; Heggernes, Pinar; Telle, Jan Arne (2017), "Definability equals recognizability for -outerplanar graphs and -chordal partial -trees" (PDF), European Journal of Combinatorics, 66: 191–234, doi: 10.1016/j.ejc.2017.06.025 , MR   3692146
  5. Kammer, Frank (2007), "Determining the smallest such that is -outerplanar", in Arge, Lars; Hoffmann, Michael; Welzl, Emo (eds.), Algorithms: ESA 2007, 15th Annual European Symposium, Eilat, Israel, October 8-10, 2007, Proceedings, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 4698, Springer, pp. 359–370, doi:10.1007/978-3-540-75520-3_33