Logarithmic Weisfeiler-Leman Identifies All Planar Graphs

The Weisfeiler-Leman (WL) algorithm is a well-known combinatorial procedure for detecting symmetries in graphs and it is widely used in graph-isomorphism tests. It proceeds by iteratively refining a colouring of vertex tuples. The number of iterations needed to obtain the final output is crucial for the parallelisability of the algorithm. We show that there is a constant k such that every planar graph can be identified (that is, distinguished from every non-isomorphic graph) by the k-dimensional WL algorithm within a logarithmic number of iterations. This generalises a result due to Verbitsky (STACS 2007), who proved the same for 3-connected planar graphs. The number of iterations needed by the k-dimensional WL algorithm to identify a graph corresponds to the quantifier depth of a sentence that defines the graph in the (k+1)-variable fragment C^{k+1} of first-order logic with counting quantifiers. Thus, our result implies that every planar graph is definable with a C^{k+1}-sentence of logarithmic quantifier depth

Permutation group approach to association schemes

AbstractWe survey the modern theory of schemes (coherent configurations). The main attention is paid to the schurity problem and the separability problem. Several applications of schemes to constructing polynomial-time algorithms, in particular, graph isomorphism tests, are discussed