Chord Diagrams and Gauss Codes for Graphs

Chord diagrams on circles and their intersection graphs (also known as circle graphs) have been intensively studied, and have many applications to the study of knots and knot invariants, among others. However, chord diagrams on more general graphs have not been studied, and are potentially equally valuable in the study of spatial graphs. We will define chord diagrams for planar embeddings of planar graphs and their intersection graphs, and prove some basic results. Then, as an application, we will introduce Gauss codes for immersions of graphs in the plane and give algorithms to determine whether a particular crossing sequence is realizable as the Gauss code of an immersed graph.Comment: 20 pages, many figures. This version has been substantially rewritten, and the results are stronge

Permanents, Pfaffian orientations, and even directed circuits

Given a 0-1 square matrix A, when can some of the 1's be changed to -1's in such a way that the permanent of A equals the determinant of the modified matrix? When does a real square matrix have the property that every real matrix with the same sign pattern (that is, the corresponding entries either have the same sign or are both zero) is nonsingular? When is a hypergraph with n vertices and n hyperedges minimally nonbipartite? When does a bipartite graph have a "Pfaffian orientation"? Given a digraph, does it have no directed circuit of even length? Given a digraph, does it have a subdivision with no even directed circuit? It is known that all of the above problems are equivalent. We prove a structural characterization of the feasible instances, which implies a polynomial-time algorithm to solve all of the above problems. The structural characterization says, roughly speaking, that a bipartite graph has a Pfaffian orientation if and only if it can be obtained by piecing together (in a specified way) planar bipartite graphs and one sporadic nonplanar bipartite graph.Comment: 47 pages, published versio

Steinitz Theorems for Orthogonal Polyhedra

We define a simple orthogonal polyhedron to be a three-dimensional polyhedron with the topology of a sphere in which three mutually-perpendicular edges meet at each vertex. By analogy to Steinitz's theorem characterizing the graphs of convex polyhedra, we find graph-theoretic characterizations of three classes of simple orthogonal polyhedra: corner polyhedra, which can be drawn by isometric projection in the plane with only one hidden vertex, xyz polyhedra, in which each axis-parallel line through a vertex contains exactly one other vertex, and arbitrary simple orthogonal polyhedra. In particular, the graphs of xyz polyhedra are exactly the bipartite cubic polyhedral graphs, and every bipartite cubic polyhedral graph with a 4-connected dual graph is the graph of a corner polyhedron. Based on our characterizations we find efficient algorithms for constructing orthogonal polyhedra from their graphs.Comment: 48 pages, 31 figure

Decomposition theorem on matchable distributive lattices

A distributive lattice structure ${\mathbf M}(G)$ has been established on the set of perfect matchings of a plane bipartite graph $G$. We call a lattice {\em matchable distributive lattice} (simply MDL) if it is isomorphic to such a distributive lattice. It is natural to ask which lattices are MDLs. We show that if a plane bipartite graph $G$ is elementary, then ${\mathbf M}(G)$ is irreducible. Based on this result, a decomposition theorem on MDLs is obtained: a finite distributive lattice $\mathbf{L}$ is an MDL if and only if each factor in any cartesian product decomposition of $\mathbf{L}$ is an MDL. Two types of MDLs are presented: $J(\mathbf{m}\times \mathbf{n})$ and $J(\mathbf{T})$, where $\mathbf{m}\times \mathbf{n}$ denotes the cartesian product between $m$-element chain and $n$-element chain, and $\mathbf{T}$ is a poset implied by any orientation of a tree.Comment: 19 pages, 7 figure

Combinatorial and Geometric Properties of Planar Laman Graphs

Laman graphs naturally arise in structural mechanics and rigidity theory. Specifically, they characterize minimally rigid planar bar-and-joint systems which are frequently needed in robotics, as well as in molecular chemistry and polymer physics. We introduce three new combinatorial structures for planar Laman graphs: angular structures, angle labelings, and edge labelings. The latter two structures are related to Schnyder realizers for maximally planar graphs. We prove that planar Laman graphs are exactly the class of graphs that have an angular structure that is a tree, called angular tree, and that every angular tree has a corresponding angle labeling and edge labeling. Using a combination of these powerful combinatorial structures, we show that every planar Laman graph has an L-contact representation, that is, planar Laman graphs are contact graphs of axis-aligned L-shapes. Moreover, we show that planar Laman graphs and their subgraphs are the only graphs that can be represented this way. We present efficient algorithms that compute, for every planar Laman graph G, an angular tree, angle labeling, edge labeling, and finally an L-contact representation of G. The overall running time is O(n^2), where n is the number of vertices of G, and the L-contact representation is realized on the n x n grid.Comment: 17 pages, 11 figures, SODA 201

Unit Grid Intersection Graphs: Recognition and Properties

It has been known since 1991 that the problem of recognizing grid intersection graphs is NP-complete. Here we use a modified argument of the above result to show that even if we restrict to the class of unit grid intersection graphs (UGIGs), the recognition remains hard, as well as for all graph classes contained inbetween. The result holds even when considering only graphs with arbitrarily large girth. Furthermore, we ask the question of representing UGIGs on grids of minimal size. We show that the UGIGs that can be represented in a square of side length 1+epsilon, for a positive epsilon no greater than 1, are exactly the orthogonal ray graphs, and that there exist families of trees that need an arbitrarily large grid