On the Complexity of Planar Covering of Small Graphs

The problem Cover(H) asks whether an input graph G covers a fixed graph H (i.e., whether there exists a homomorphism G to H which locally preserves the structure of the graphs). Complexity of this problem has been intensively studied. In this paper, we consider the problem PlanarCover(H) which restricts the input graph G to be planar. PlanarCover(H) is polynomially solvable if Cover(H) belongs to P, and it is even trivially solvable if H has no planar cover. Thus the interesting cases are when H admits a planar cover, but Cover(H) is NP-complete. This also relates the problem to the long-standing Negami Conjecture which aims to describe all graphs having a planar cover. Kratochvil asked whether there are non-trivial graphs for which Cover(H) is NP-complete but PlanarCover(H) belongs to P. We examine the first nontrivial cases of graphs H for which Cover(H) is NP-complete and which admit a planar cover. We prove NP-completeness of PlanarCover(H) in these cases.Comment: Full version (including Appendix) of a paper from the conference WG 201

3-connected Reduction for Regular Graph Covers

A graph $G$ covers a graph $H$ if there exists a locally bijective homomorphism from $G$ to $H$. We deal with regular coverings in which this homomorphism is prescribed by an action of a semiregular subgroup $\Gamma$ of $\textrm{Aut}(G)$; so $H \cong G / \Gamma$. In this paper, we study the behaviour of regular graph covering with respect to 1-cuts and 2-cuts in $G$. We describe reductions which produce a series of graphs $G = G_0,\dots,G_r$ such that $G_{i+1}$ is created from $G_i$ by replacing certain inclusion minimal subgraphs with colored edges. The process ends with a primitive graph $G_r$ which is either 3-connected, or a cycle, or $K_2$. This reduction can be viewed as a non-trivial modification of reductions of Mac Lane (1937), Trachtenbrot (1958), Tutte (1966), Hopcroft and Tarjan (1973), Cuningham and Edmonds (1980), Walsh (1982), and others. A novel feature of our approach is that in each step all essential information about symmetries of $G$ are preserved. A regular covering projection $G_0\to H_0$ induces regular covering projections $G_i \to H_i$ where $H_i$ is the $i$-th quotient reduction of $H_0$. This property allows to construct all possible quotients $H_0$ of $G_0$ from the possible quotients $H_r$ of $G_r$. By applying this method to planar graphs, we give a proof of Negami's Theorem (1988). Our structural results are also used in subsequent papers for regular covering testing when $G$ is a planar graph and for an inductive characterization of the automorphism groups of planar graphs (see Babai (1973) as well).Comment: The journal version of the first part of arXiv:1402.377