A Weakly-Robust PTAS for Minimum Clique Partition in Unit Disk Graphs

We consider the problem of partitioning the set of vertices of a given unit disk graph (UDG) into a minimum number of cliques. The problem is NP-hard and various constant factor approximations are known, with the current best ratio of 3. Our main result is a {\em weakly robust} polynomial time approximation scheme (PTAS) for UDGs expressed with edge-lengths, it either (i) computes a clique partition or (ii) gives a certificate that the graph is not a UDG; for the case (i) that it computes a clique partition, we show that it is guaranteed to be within (1+\eps) ratio of the optimum if the input is UDG; however if the input is not a UDG it either computes a clique partition as in case (i) with no guarantee on the quality of the clique partition or detects that it is not a UDG. Noting that recognition of UDG's is NP-hard even if we are given edge lengths, our PTAS is a weakly-robust algorithm. Our algorithm can be transformed into an O(\frac{\log^* n}{\eps^{O(1)}}) time distributed PTAS. We consider a weighted version of the clique partition problem on vertex weighted UDGs that generalizes the problem. We note some key distinctions with the unweighted version, where ideas useful in obtaining a PTAS breakdown. Yet, surprisingly, it admits a (2+\eps)-approximation algorithm for the weighted case where the graph is expressed, say, as an adjacency matrix. This improves on the best known 8-approximation for the {\em unweighted} case for UDGs expressed in standard form.Comment: 21 pages, 9 figure

Beyond Outerplanarity

We study straight-line drawings of graphs where the vertices are placed in convex position in the plane, i.e., convex drawings. We consider two families of graph classes with nice convex drawings: outer $k$-planar graphs, where each edge is crossed by at most $k$ other edges; and, outer $k$-quasi-planar graphs where no $k$ edges can mutually cross. We show that the outer $k$-planar graphs are $(\lfloor\sqrt{4k+1}\rfloor+1)$-degenerate, and consequently that every outer $k$-planar graph can be $(\lfloor\sqrt{4k+1}\rfloor+2)$-colored, and this bound is tight. We further show that every outer $k$-planar graph has a balanced separator of size $O(k)$. This implies that every outer $k$-planar graph has treewidth $O(k)$. For fixed $k$, these small balanced separators allow us to obtain a simple quasi-polynomial time algorithm to test whether a given graph is outer $k$-planar, i.e., none of these recognition problems are NP-complete unless ETH fails. For the outer $k$-quasi-planar graphs we prove that, unlike other beyond-planar graph classes, every edge-maximal $n$-vertex outer $k$-quasi planar graph has the same number of edges, namely $2(k-1)n - \binom{2k-1}{2}$. We also construct planar 3-trees that are not outer $3$-quasi-planar. Finally, we restrict outer $k$-planar and outer $k$-quasi-planar drawings to \emph{closed} drawings, where the vertex sequence on the boundary is a cycle in the graph. For each $k$, we express closed outer $k$-planarity and \emph{closed outer $k$-quasi-planarity} in extended monadic second-order logic. Thus, closed outer $k$-planarity is linear-time testable by Courcelle's Theorem.Comment: Appears in the Proceedings of the 25th International Symposium on Graph Drawing and Network Visualization (GD 2017

Multi-triangulations as complexes of star polygons

Maximal $(k+1)$-crossing-free graphs on a planar point set in convex position, that is, $k$-triangulations, have received attention in recent literature, with motivation coming from several interpretations of them. We introduce a new way of looking at $k$-triangulations, namely as complexes of star polygons. With this tool we give new, direct, proofs of the fundamental properties of $k$-triangulations, as well as some new results. This interpretation also opens-up new avenues of research, that we briefly explore in the last section.Comment: 40 pages, 24 figures; added references, update Section

A separator theorem for string graphs and its applications

A string graph is the intersection graph of a collection of continuous arcs in the plane. We show that any string graph with in edges can be separated into two parts of roughly equal size by the removal of O(m(3/4)root log m) vertices. This result is then used to deduce that every string graph with n vertices and no complete bipartite subgraph K-t,K-t has at most c(t)n edges, where c(t) is a constant depending only on t. Another application shows that locally tree-like string graphs are globally tree-like: for any epsilon > 0, there is an integer g(epsilon) such that every string graph with n vertices and girth at least g(epsilon) has at most (1 + epsilon)n edges. Furthermore, the number of such labelled graphs is at most (1 + epsilon)(n) T(n), where T(n) = n(n-2) is the number of labelled trees on n vertices

Weak epsilon-nets for points on a hypersphere

We present algorithms for the two layer straightline crossing minimization problem that are able to compute exact optima. Our computational results lead us to the conclusion that there is no need for heuristics if one layer is fixed, even though the problem is NP-hard, and that for the general problem with two variable layers, true optima can be computed for sparse instances in which the smaller layer contains up to 15 nodes. For bigger instances, the iterated barycenter method turns out to be the method of choice among several popular heuristics whose performance we could assess by comparing the results to optimum solutions

Weak #epsilon#-nets for points on a hypersphere

Available from TIB Hannover: RR 1912(95-1-029) / FIZ - Fachinformationszzentrum Karlsruhe / TIB - Technische InformationsbibliothekSIGLEDEGerman