Choosability in signed planar graphs

This paper studies the choosability of signed planar graphs. We prove that every signed planar graph is 5-choosable and that there is a signed planar graph which is not 4-choosable while the unsigned graph is 4-choosable. For each $k \in \{3,4,5,6\}$, every signed planar graph without circuits of length $k$ is 4-choosable. Furthermore, every signed planar graph without circuits of length 3 and of length 4 is 3-choosable. We construct a signed planar graph with girth 4 which is not 3-choosable but the unsigned graph is 3-choosable.Comment: We updated the reference lis

Triangulating planar graphs while keeping the pathwidth small

Any simple planar graph can be triangulated, i.e., we can add edges to it, without adding multi-edges, such that the result is planar and all faces are triangles. In this paper, we study the problem of triangulating a planar graph without increasing the pathwidth by much. We show that if a planar graph has pathwidth $k$, then we can triangulate it so that the resulting graph has pathwidth $O(k)$ (where the factors are 1, 8 and 16 for 3-connected, 2-connected and arbitrary graphs). With similar techniques, we also show that any outer-planar graph of pathwidth $k$ can be turned into a maximal outer-planar graph of pathwidth at most $4k+4$. The previously best known result here was $16k+15$.Comment: To appear (without the appendix) at WG 201

Tree-colorable maximal planar graphs

A tree-coloring of a maximal planar graph is a proper vertex $4$-coloring such that every bichromatic subgraph, induced by this coloring, is a tree. A maximal planar graph $G$ is tree-colorable if $G$ has a tree-coloring. In this article, we prove that a tree-colorable maximal planar graph $G$ with $\delta(G)\geq 4$ contains at least four odd-vertices. Moreover, for a tree-colorable maximal planar graph of minimum degree 4 that contains exactly four odd-vertices, we show that the subgraph induced by its four odd-vertices is not a claw and contains no triangles.Comment: 18pages,10figure

Nodally 3-connected planar graphs and convex combination mappings

A convex combination mapping of a planar graph is a plane mapping in which the external vertices are mapped to the corners of a convex polygon and every internal vertex is a proper weighted average of its neighbours. If a planar graph is nodally 3-connected or triangulated then every such mapping is an embedding (Tutte, Floater). We give a simple characterisation of nodally 3-connected planar graphs, and generalise the above result to any planar graph which admits any convex embedding.Comment: 27 pages Latex, 11 postscript figure

A Simple Proof of the Four-Color Theorem

A simpler proof of the four color theorem is presented. The proof was reached using a series of equivalent theorems. First the maximum number of edges of a planar graph is obatined as well as the minimum number of edges for a complete graph. Then it is shown that for the theorem to be false there must exist a complete planar graph of $h$ edges such that $h>4$. Finally the theorem is proved to be true by showing that there does not exist a complete planar graph with $h>4$.Comment: 4pages, 2 figure

Gr\"obner Basis Convex Polytopes and Planar Graph

Using the Gr\"obner basis of an ideal generated by a family of polynomials we prove that every planar graph is 4-colorable. Here we also use the fact that the complete graph of 5 vertices is not included in any planar graph

A Sufficient condition for DP-4-colorability

DP-coloring of a simple graph is a generalization of list coloring, and also a generalization of signed coloring of signed graphs. It is known that for each $k \in \{3, 4, 5, 6\}$, every planar graph without $C_k$ is 4-choosable. Furthermore, Jin, Kang, and Steffen \cite{JKS} showed that for each $k \in \{3, 4, 5, 6\}$, every signed planar graph without $C_k$ is signed 4-choosable. In this paper, we show that for each $k \in \{3, 4, 5, 6\}$, every planar graph without $C_k$ is 4-DP-colorable, which is an extension of the above results

On the Circumference of Essentially 4-connected Planar Graphs

A planar graph is essentially $4$-connected if it is 3-connected and every of its 3-separators is the neighborhood of a single vertex. Jackson and Wormald proved that every essentially 4-connected planar graph $G$ on $n$ vertices contains a cycle of length at least $\frac{2n+4}{5}$, and this result has recently been improved multiple times. In this paper, we prove that every essentially 4-connected planar graph $G$ on $n$ vertices contains a cycle of length at least $\frac{5}{8}(n+2)$. This improves the previously best-known lower bound $\frac{3}{5}(n+2)$.Comment: 26 page

A Log-space Algorithm for Canonization of Planar Graphs

Graph Isomorphism is the prime example of a computational problem with a wide difference between the best known lower and upper bounds on its complexity. We bridge this gap for a natural and important special case, planar graph isomorphism, by presenting an upper bound that matches the known logspace hardness [Lindell'92]. In fact, we show the formally stronger result that planar graph canonization is in logspace. This improves the previously known upper bound of AC1 [MillerReif'91]. Our algorithm first constructs the biconnected component tree of a connected planar graph and then refines each biconnected component into a triconnected component tree. The next step is to logspace reduce the biconnected planar graph isomorphism and canonization problems to those for 3-connected planar graphs, which are known to be in logspace by [DattaLimayeNimbhorkar'08]. This is achieved by using the above decomposition, and by making significant modifications to Lindell's algorithm for tree canonization, along with changes in the space complexity analysis. The reduction from the connected case to the biconnected case requires further new ideas, including a non-trivial case analysis and a group theoretic lemma to bound the number of automorphisms of a colored 3-connected planar graph. This lemma is crucial for the reduction to work in logspace

Partitioning a triangle-free planar graph into a forest and a forest of bounded degree

An $({\cal F},{\cal F}_d)$-partition of a graph is a vertex-partition into two sets $F$ and $F_d$ such that the graph induced by $F$ is a forest and the one induced by $F_d$ is a forest with maximum degree at most $d$. We prove that every triangle-free planar graph admits an $({\cal F},{\cal F}_5)$-partition. Moreover we show that if for some integer $d$ there exists a triangle-free planar graph that does not admit an $({\cal F},{\cal F}_d)$-partition, then it is an NP-complete problem to decide whether a triangle-free planar graph admits such a partition.Comment: 16 pages, 12 figure