Motivated by the problem of testing planarity and related properties, we
study the problem of designing efficient {\em partition oracles}. A {\em
partition oracle} is a procedure that, given access to the incidence lists
representation of a bounded-degree graph G=(V,E) and a parameter \eps,
when queried on a vertex vβV, returns the part (subset of vertices) which
v belongs to in a partition of all graph vertices. The partition should be
such that all parts are small, each part is connected, and if the graph has
certain properties, the total number of edges between parts is at most \eps
|V|. In this work we give a partition oracle for graphs with excluded minors
whose query complexity is quasi-polynomial in 1/\eps, thus improving on the
result of Hassidim et al. ({\em Proceedings of FOCS 2009}) who gave a partition
oracle with query complexity exponential in 1/\eps. This improvement implies
corresponding improvements in the complexity of testing planarity and other
properties that are characterized by excluded minors as well as sublinear-time
approximation algorithms that work under the promise that the graph has an
excluded minor.Comment: 13 pages, 1 figur