Tree-width of hypergraphs and surface duality

In Graph Minors III, Robertson and Seymour write: "It seems that the tree-width of a planar graph and the tree-width of its geometric dual are approximately equal - indeed, we have convinced ourselves that they differ by at most one". They never gave a proof of this. In this paper, we prove a generalisation of this statement to embedding of hypergraphs on general surfaces, and we prove that our bound is tight

Dynamic programming for graphs on surfaces

We provide a framework for the design and analysis of dynamic programming algorithms for surface-embedded graphs on n vertices and branchwidth at most k. Our technique applies to general families of problems where standard dynamic programming runs in 2O(k·log k). Our approach combines tools from topological graph theory and analytic combinatorics.Postprint (updated version

The Z2\mathbb{Z}_2-genus of Kuratowski minors

A drawing of a graph on a surface is independently even if every pair of nonadjacent edges in the drawing crosses an even number of times. The $\mathbb{Z}_2$-genus of a graph $G$ is the minimum $g$ such that $G$ has an independently even drawing on the orientable surface of genus $g$. An unpublished result by Robertson and Seymour implies that for every $t$, every graph of sufficiently large genus contains as a minor a projective $t\times t$ grid or one of the following so-called $t$-Kuratowski graphs: $K_{3,t}$, or $t$ copies of $K_5$ or $K_{3,3}$ sharing at most $2$ common vertices. We show that the $\mathbb{Z}_2$-genus of graphs in these families is unbounded in $t$; in fact, equal to their genus. Together, this implies that the genus of a graph is bounded from above by a function of its $\mathbb{Z}_2$-genus, solving a problem posed by Schaefer and \v{S}tefankovi\v{c}, and giving an approximate version of the Hanani-Tutte theorem on orientable surfaces. We also obtain an analogous result for Euler genus and Euler $\mathbb{Z}_2$-genus of graphs.Comment: 23 pages, 7 figures; a few references added and correcte

On Hardness of the Joint Crossing Number

The Joint Crossing Number problem asks for a simultaneous embedding of two disjoint graphs into one surface such that the number of edge crossings (between the two graphs) is minimized. It was introduced by Negami in 2001 in connection with diagonal flips in triangulations of surfaces, and subsequently investigated in a general form for small-genus surfaces. We prove that all of the commonly considered variants of this problem are NP-hard already in the orientable surface of genus 6, by a reduction from a special variant of the anchored crossing number problem of Cabello and Mohar

Dynamic Programming for Graphs on Surfaces

We provide a framework for the design and analysis of dynamic programming algorithms for surface-embedded graphs on n vertices and branchwidth at most k. Our technique applies to general families of problems where standard dynamic programming runs in 2^{O(k log k)} n steps. Our approach combines tools from topological graph theory and analytic combinatorics. In particular, we introduce a new type of branch decomposition called "surface cut decomposition", generalizing sphere cut decompositions of planar graphs introduced by Seymour and Thomas, which has nice combinatorial properties. Namely, the number of partial solutions that can be arranged on a surface cut decomposition can be upper-bounded by the number of non-crossing partitions on surfaces with boundary. It follows that partial solutions can be represented by a single-exponential (in the branchwidth k) number of configurations. This proves that, when applied on surface cut decompositions, dynamic programming runs in 2^{O(k)} n steps. That way, we considerably extend the class of problems that can be solved in running times with a single-exponential dependence on branchwidth and unify/improve most previous results in this direction.Comment: 28 pages, 3 figure

Shortest path embeddings of graphs on surfaces

The classical theorem of F\'{a}ry states that every planar graph can be represented by an embedding in which every edge is represented by a straight line segment. We consider generalizations of F\'{a}ry's theorem to surfaces equipped with Riemannian metrics. In this setting, we require that every edge is drawn as a shortest path between its two endpoints and we call an embedding with this property a shortest path embedding. The main question addressed in this paper is whether given a closed surface S, there exists a Riemannian metric for which every topologically embeddable graph admits a shortest path embedding. This question is also motivated by various problems regarding crossing numbers on surfaces. We observe that the round metrics on the sphere and the projective plane have this property. We provide flat metrics on the torus and the Klein bottle which also have this property. Then we show that for the unit square flat metric on the Klein bottle there exists a graph without shortest path embeddings. We show, moreover, that for large g, there exist graphs G embeddable into the orientable surface of genus g, such that with large probability a random hyperbolic metric does not admit a shortest path embedding of G, where the probability measure is proportional to the Weil-Petersson volume on moduli space. Finally, we construct a hyperbolic metric on every orientable surface S of genus g, such that every graph embeddable into S can be embedded so that every edge is a concatenation of at most O(g) shortest paths.Comment: 22 pages, 11 figures: Version 3 is updated after comments of reviewer