In a RAC drawing of a graph, vertices are represented by points in the plane, adjacent vertices are connected by line segments, and crossings must form right angles. Graphs that admit such drawings are RAC graphs. RAC graphs are beyond-planar graphs and have been studied extensively. In particular, it is known that a RAC graph with n vertices has at most 4n - 10 edges.
We introduce a superclass of RAC graphs, which we call arc-RAC graphs. A graph is arc-RAC if it admits a drawing where edges are represented by circular arcs and crossings form right angles. We provide a Turán-type result showing that an arc-RAC graph with n vertices has at most 14n - 12 edges and that there are n-vertex arc-RAC graphs with 4.5n - o(n) edges.
Graph drawing beyond planarity focuses on drawings of high visual quality for non-planar graphs which are characterized by certain forbidden edge configurations. A natural criterion for the quality of a drawing is the number of edge crossings. The question then arises whether beyond-planar drawings have a significantly larger crossing number than unrestricted drawings. Chimani et al. [GD'19] gave bounds for the ratio between the crossing number of three classes of beyond-planar graphs and the unrestricted crossing number. In this paper we extend their results to the main currently known classe…
Let $S$ be a set of $n$ points in general position in the plane. Join every pair of points in $S$ with a straight line segment. Let $\overline{cr}(S)$ be number of pairs of these edges that intersect in their interior. Suppose that this number is known. In this paper we consider the problem of computing $\overline{cr}(S')$, where $S'$ comes from adding, deleting or moving a point from $S$.
We study methods for drawing trees with perfect angular resolution, i.e., with angles at each node v equal to 2π/d(v). We show: 1. Any unordered tree has a crossing-free straight-line drawing with perfect angular resolution and polynomial area. 2. There are ordered trees that require exponential area for any crossing-free straight-line drawing having perfect angular resolution. 3. Any ordered tree has a crossing-free Lombardi-style drawing (where each edge is represented by a circular arc) with perfect angular resolution and polynomial area. Thus, our results explore what is achievable with st…
We initiate the study of the following problem: Given a non-planar graph G and a planar subgraph S of G, does there exist a straight-line drawing Γ of G in the plane such that the edges of S are not crossed in Γ by any edge of G? We give positive and negative results for different kinds of connected spanning subgraphs S of G. Moreover, in order to enlarge the subset of instances that admit a solution, we consider the possibility of bending the edges of G not in S; in this setting we discuss different trade-offs between the number of bends and the required drawing area.
Let $G$ be a simple topological graph and let $Γ$ be a polyline drawing of $G$. We say that $Γ$ \emph{partially preserves the topology} of $G$ if it has the same external boundary, the same rotation system, and the same set of crossings as $G$. Drawing $Γ$ fully preserves the topology of $G$ if the planarization of $G$ and the planarization of $Γ$ have the same planar embedding. We show that if the set of crossing-free edges of $G$ forms a connected spanning subgraph, then $G$ admits a polyline drawing that partially preserves its topology and that has curve complexity at most three (i.e., at …
Due to data compression or low resolution, nearby vertices and edges of a graph drawing may be bundled to a common node or arc. We model such a `compromised' drawing by a piecewise linear map $φ:G\rightarrow \mathbb{R}^2$. We wish to perturb $φ$ by an arbitrarily small $\varepsilon>0$ into a proper drawing (in which the vertices are distinct points, any two edges intersect in finitely many points, and no three edges have a common interior point) that minimizes the number of crossings. An $\varepsilon$-perturbation, for every $\varepsilon>0$, is given by a piecewise linear map $ψ_\varepsilon:G\…
In extension problems of partial graph drawings one is given an incomplete drawing of an input graph $G$ and is asked to complete the drawing while maintaining certain properties. A prominent area where such problems arise is that of crossing minimization. For plane drawings and various relaxations of these, there is a number of tractability as well as lower-bound results exploring the computational complexity of crossing-sensitive drawing extension problems. In contrast, comparatively few results are known on extension problems for the fundamental and broad class of simple drawings, that is, …
An effective way to reduce clutter in a graph drawing that has (many) crossings is to group edges that travel in parallel into \emph{bundles}. Each edge can participate in many such bundles. Any crossing in this bundled graph occurs between two bundles, i.e., as a \emph{bundled crossing}. We consider the problem of bundled crossing minimization: A graph is given and the goal is to find a bundled drawing with at most $k$ bundled crossings. We show that the problem is NP-hard when we require a simple drawing. Our main result is an FPT algorithm (in $k$) when we require a simple circular layout. …
We study crossing-free grid morphs for planar tree drawings using 3D. A morph consists of morphing steps, where vertices move simultaneously along straight-line trajectories at constant speeds. A crossing-free morph is known between two drawings of an $n$-vertex planar graph $G$ with $\mathcal{O}(n)$ morphing steps and using the third dimension it can be reduced to $\mathcal{O}(\log n)$ for an $n$-vertex tree [Arseneva et al.\ 2019]. However, these morphs do not bound one practical parameter, the resolution. Can the number of steps be reduced substantially by using the third dimension while ke…
Research about crossings is typically about minimization. In this paper, we consider \emph{maximizing} the number of crossings over all possible ways to draw a given graph in the plane. Alpert et al. [Electron. J. Combin., 2009] conjectured that any graph has a \emph{convex} straight-line drawing, e.g., a drawing with vertices in convex position, that maximizes the number of edge crossings. We disprove this conjecture by constructing a planar graph on twelve vertices that allows a non-convex drawing with more crossings than any convex one. Bald et al. [Proc. COCOON, 2016] showed that it is NP-…
We study the following classes of beyond-planar graphs: 1-planar, IC-planar, and NIC-planar graphs. These are the graphs that admit a 1-planar, IC-planar, and NIC-planar drawing, respectively. A drawing of a graph is 1-planar if every edge is crossed at most once. A 1-planar drawing is IC-planar if no two pairs of crossing edges share a vertex. A 1-planar drawing is NIC-planar if no two pairs of crossing edges share two vertices. We study the relations of these beyond-planar graph classes (beyond-planar graphs is a collective term for the primary attempts to generalize the planar graphs) to ri…
The crossing angle of a straight-line drawing $Γ$ of a graph $G=(V, E)$ is the smallest angle between two crossing edges in $Γ$. Deciding whether a graph $G$ has a straight-line drawing with a crossing angle of $90^\circ$ is $\mathcal NP$-hard. We propose a simple heuristic to compute a drawing with a large crossing angle. The heuristic greedily selects the best position for a single vertex in a random set of points. The algorithm is accompanied by a speed-up technique to compute the crossing angle of a straight-line drawing. We show the effectiveness of the heuristic in an extensive empirical…
Given two planar graphs that are defined on the same set of vertices, a RAC simultaneous drawing is one in which each graph is drawn planar, there are no edge overlaps and the crossings between the two graphs form right angles. The geometric version restricts the problem to straight-line drawings. It is known, however, that there exists a wheel and a matching which do not admit a geometric RAC simultaneous drawing. In order to enlarge the class of graphs that admit RAC simultaneous drawings, we allow bends in the resulting drawings. We prove that two planar graphs always admit a RAC simultaneo…
A star-simple drawing of a graph is a drawing in which adjacent edges do not cross. In contrast, there is no restriction on the number of crossings between two independent edges. When allowing empty lenses (a face in the arrangement induced by two edges that is bounded by a 2-cycle), two independent edges may cross arbitrarily many times in a star-simple drawing. We consider star-simple drawings of $K_n$ with no empty lens. In this setting we prove an upper bound of $3((n-4)!)$ on the maximum number of crossings between any pair of edges. It follows that the total number of crossings is finite…
The Harary-Hill conjecture states that for every $n>0$ the complete graph on $n$ vertices $K_n$, the minimum number of crossings over all its possible drawings equals \begin{align*} H(n) := \frac{1}{4}\Big\lfloor\frac{n}{2}\Big\rfloor\Big\lfloor\frac{n-1}{2}\Big\rfloor\Big\lfloor\frac{n-2}{2}\Big\rfloor\Big\lfloor\frac{n-3}{2}\Big\rfloor\text{.} \end{align*} So far, the lower bound of the conjecture could only be verified for arbitrary drawings of $K_n$ with $n\leq 12$. In recent years, progress has been made in verifying the conjecture for certain classes of drawings, for example $2$-page-boo…
Bundling crossings is a strategy which can enhance the readability of drawings. In this paper we consider good drawings, i.e., we require that any two edges have at most one common point which can be a common vertex or a crossing. Our main result is that there is a polynomial time algorithm to compute an 8-approximation of the bundled crossing number of a good drawing (up to adding a term depending on the facial structure of the drawing). In the special case of circular drawings the approximation factor is 8 (no extra term), this improves upon the 10-approximation of Fink et al. (Bundled cross…
Scheinerman and Wilf (1994) assert that `an important open problem in the study of graph embeddings is to determine the rectilinear crossing number of the complete graph K_n.' A rectilinear drawing of K_n is an arrangement of n vertices in the plane, every pair of which is connected by an edge that is a line segment. We assume that no three vertices are collinear, and that no three edges intersect in a point unless that point is an endpoint of all three. The rectilinear crossing number of K_n is the fewest number of edge crossings attainable over all rectilinear drawings of K_n. For each n we …
The Harary-Hill Conjecture States that the number of crossings in any drawing of the complete graph $ K_n $ in the plane is at least $Z(n):=\frac{1}{4}\left\lfloor \frac{n}{2}\right\rfloor \left\lfloor\frac{n-1}{2}\right\rfloor \left\lfloor \frac{n-2}{2}\right\rfloor\left\lfloor \frac{n-3}{2}\right\rfloor$. In this paper, we settle the Harary-Hill conjecture for {\em shellable drawings}. We say that a drawing $D$ of $ K_n $ is {\em $ s $-shellable} if there exist a subset $ S = \{v_1,v_2,\ldots,v_ s\}$ of the vertices and a region $R$ of $D$ with the following property: For all $1 \leq i < j \…
A drawing of a graph is fan-planar if the edges intersecting a common edge $a$ share a vertex $A$ on the same side of $a$. More precisely, orienting $e$ arbitrarily and the other edges towards $A$ results in a consistent orientation of the crossings. So far, fan-planar drawings have only been considered in the context of simple drawings, where any two edges share at most one point, including endpoints. We show that every non-simple fan-planar drawing can be redrawn as a simple fan-planar drawing of the same graph while not introducing additional crossings. Combined with previous results on fan…
In Lombardi drawings of graphs, edges are represented as circular arcs, and the edges incident on vertices have perfect angular resolution. However, not every graph has a Lombardi drawing, and not every planar graph has a planar Lombardi drawing. We introduce k-Lombardi drawings, in which each edge may be drawn with k circular arcs, noting that every graph has a smooth 2-Lombardi drawing. We show that every planar graph has a smooth planar 3-Lombardi drawing and further investigate topics connecting planarity and Lombardi drawings.
We introduce a model for random geodesic drawings of the complete bipartite graph $K_{n,n}$ on the unit sphere $\mathbb{S}^2$ in $\mathbb{R}^3$, where we select the vertices in each bipartite class of $K_{n,n}$ with respect to two non-degenerate probability measures on $\mathbb{S}^2$. It has been proved recently that many such measures give drawings whose crossing number approximates the Zarankiewicz number (the conjectured crossing number of $K_{n,n}$). In this paper we consider the intersection graphs associated with such random drawings. We prove that for any probability measures, the resul…
A crossing-free straight-line drawing of a graph is monotone if there is a monotone path between any pair of vertices with respect to some direction. We show how to construct a monotone drawing of a tree with $n$ vertices on an $O(n^{1.5}) \times O(n^{1.5})$ grid whose angles are close to the best possible angular resolution. Our drawings are convex, that is, if every edge to a leaf is substituted by a ray, the (unbounded) faces form convex regions. It is known that convex drawings are monotone and, in the case of trees, also crossing-free. A monotone drawing is strongly monotone if, for every…
In a drawing of a clustered graph vertices and edges are drawn as points and curves, respectively, while clusters are represented by simple closed regions. A drawing of a clustered graph is c-planar if it has no edge-edge, edge-region, or region-region crossings. Determining the complexity of testing whether a clustered graph admits a c-planar drawing is a long-standing open problem in the Graph Drawing research area. An obvious necessary condition for c-planarity is the planarity of the graph underlying the clustered graph. However, such a condition is not sufficient and the consequences on t…
A weak pseudoline arrangement is a topological generalization of a line arrangement, consisting of curves topologically equivalent to lines that cross each other at most once. We consider arrangements that are outerplanar---each crossing is incident to an unbounded face---and simple---each crossing point is the crossing of only two curves. We show that these arrangements can be represented by chords of a circle, by convex polygonal chains with only two bends, or by hyperbolic lines. Simple but non-outerplanar arrangements (non-weak) can be represented by convex polygonal chains or convex smoot…
We consider drawings of trees in which all edges incident to leaves can be extended to infinite rays without crossing, partitioning the plane into infinite convex polygons. Among all such drawings we seek the one maximizing the angular resolution of the drawing. We find linear time algorithms for solving this problem, both for plane trees and for trees without a fixed embedding. In any such drawing, the edge lengths may be set independently of the angles, without crossing; we describe multiple strategies for setting these lengths.
We find a family of planar bipartite graphs all of whose Lombardi drawings (drawings with circular arcs for edges, meeting at equal angles at the vertices) are nonplanar. We also find families of embedded series-parallel graphs and apex-trees (graphs formed by adding one vertex to a tree) for which there is no planar Lombardi drawing consistent with the given embedding.
A drawing of a graph in the plane is {\it pseudolinear} if the edges of the drawing can be extended to doubly-infinite curves that form an arrangement of pseudolines, that is, any pair of edges crosses precisely once. A special case are {\it rectilinear} drawings where the edges of the graph are drawn as straight line segments. The rectilinear (pseudolinear) crossing number of a graph is the minimum number of pairs of edges of the graph that cross in any of its rectilinear (pseudolinear) drawings. In this paper we describe an ongoing project to continuously obtain better asymptotic upper bound…
Inspired by the increasingly popular research on extending partial graph drawings, we propose a new perspective on the traditional and arguably most important geometric graph parameter, the crossing number. Specifically, we define the partially predrawn crossing number to be the smallest number of crossings in any drawing of a graph, part of which is prescribed on the input (not counting the prescribed crossings). Our main result - an FPT-algorithm to compute the partially predrawn crossing number - combines advanced ideas from research on the classical crossing number and so called partial pl…
Motivated by the successful application of geometry to proving the Harary-Hill Conjecture for "pseudolinear" drawings of $K_n$, we introduce "pseudospherical" drawings of graphs. A spherical drawing of a graph $G$ is a drawing in the unit sphere $\mathbb{S}^2$ in which the vertices of $G$ are represented as points -- no three on a great circle -- and the edges of $G$ are shortest-arcs in $\mathbb{S}^2$ connecting pairs of vertices. Such a drawing has three properties: (1) every edge $e$ is contained in a simple closed curve $γ_e$ such that the only vertices in $γ_e$ are the ends of $e$; (2) if…
We prove crossing number inequalities for geometric graphs whose vertex sets are taken from a d-dimensional grid of volume N and give applications of these inequalities to counting the number of non-crossing geometric graphs that can be drawn on such grids. In particular, we show that any geometric graph with m >= 8N edges and with vertices on a 3D integer grid of volume N, has Ω((m^2/n)\log(m/n)) crossings. In d-dimensions, with d >= 4, this bound becomes Ω(m^2/n). We provide matching upper bounds for all d. Finally, for d >= 4 the upper bound implies that the maximum number of crossing-free …
In this paper, we study tradeoffs between curve complexity and area of Right Angle Crossing drawings (RAC drawings), which is a challenging theoretical problem in graph drawing. Given a graph with $n$ vertices and $m$ edges, we provide a RAC drawing algorithm with curve complexity $6$ and area $O(n^{2.75})$, which takes time $O(n+m)$. Our algorithm improves the previous upper bound $O(n^3)$, by Di Giacomo et al., on the area of RAC drawings.
We show that the 1-planar slope number of 3-connected cubic 1-planar graphs is at most 4 when edges are drawn as polygonal curves with at most 1 bend each. This bound is obtained by drawings whose vertex and crossing resolution is at least $π/4$. On the other hand, if the embedding is fixed, then there is a 3-connected cubic 1-planar graph that needs 3 slopes when drawn with at most 1 bend per edge. We also show that 2 slopes always suffice for 1-planar drawings of subcubic 1-planar graphs with at most 2 bends per edge. This bound is obtained with vertex resolution $π/2$ and the drawing is RAC…
Around 1958, Hill described how to draw the complete graph $K_n$ with [Z(n) :=1/4\lfloor \frac{n}{2}\rfloor \lfloor \frac{n-1}{2}\rfloor \lfloor \frac{n-2}{2}% \rfloor \lfloor \frac{n-3}{2}\rfloor] crossings, and conjectured that the crossing number $\crg (K_{n})$ of $K_n$ is exactly Z(n). This is also known as Guy's conjecture as he later popularized it. Towards the end of the century, substantially different drawings of $K_{n}$ with Z(n) crossings were found. These drawings are \emph{2-page book drawings}, that is, drawings where all the vertices are on a line $\ell$ (the spine) and each edg…
We study the 1-planar, quasi-planar, and fan-planar crossing number in comparison to the (unrestricted) crossing number of graphs. We prove that there are $n$-vertex 1-planar (quasi-planar, fan-planar) graphs such that any 1-planar (quasi-planar, fan-planar) drawing has $Ω(n)$ crossings, while $O(1)$ crossings suffice in a crossing-minimal drawing without restrictions on local edge crossing patterns.
We define the \emph{visual complexity} of a plane graph drawing to be the number of basic geometric objects needed to represent all its edges. In particular, one object may represent multiple edges (e.g., one needs only one line segment to draw a path with an arbitrary number of edges). Let $n$ denote the number of vertices of a graph. We show that trees can be drawn with $3n/4$ straight-line segments on a polynomial grid, and with $n/2$ straight-line segments on a quasi-polynomial grid. Further, we present an algorithm for drawing planar 3-trees with $(8n-17)/3$ segments on an $O(n)\times O(n…
The crossing number is the smallest number of pairwise edge-crossings when drawing a graph into the plane. There are only very few graph classes for which the exact crossing number is known or for which there at least exist constant approximation ratios. Furthermore, up to now, general crossing number computations have never been successfully tackled using bounded width of graph decompositions, like treewidth or pathwidth. In this paper, we for the first time show that crossing number is tractable (even in linear time) for maximal graphs of bounded pathwidth~3. The technique also shows that th…
We introduce the notion of Lombardi graph drawings, named after the American abstract artist Mark Lombardi. In these drawings, edges are represented as circular arcs rather than as line segments or polylines, and the vertices have perfect angular resolution: the edges are equally spaced around each vertex. We describe algorithms for finding Lombardi drawings of regular graphs, graphs of bounded degeneracy, and certain families of planar graphs.
Graph drawing addresses the problem of finding a layout of a graph that satisfies given aesthetic and understandability objectives. The most important objective in graph drawing is minimization of the number of crossings in the drawing, as the aesthetics and readability of graph drawings depend on the number of edge crossings. VLSI layouts with fewer crossings are more easily realizable and consequently cheaper. A straight-line drawing of a planar graph G of n vertices is a drawing of G such that each edge is drawn as a straight-line segment without edge crossings. However, a problem with curr…
A straight-line drawing of a graph $G$ is a mapping which assigns to each vertex a point in the plane and to each edge a straight-line segment connecting the corresponding two points. The rectilinear crossing number of a graph $G$, $\overline{cr}(G)$, is the minimum number of crossing edges in any straight-line drawing of $G$. Determining or estimating $\overline{cr}(G)$ appears to be a difficult problem, and deciding if $\overline{cr}(G)\leq k$ is known to be NP-hard. In fact, the asymptotic behavior of $\overline{cr}(K_n)$ is still unknown. In this paper, we present a deterministic $n^{2+o(1…
Given a drawing of a graph, its \emph{visual complexity} is defined as the number of geometrical entities in the drawing, for example, the number of segments in a straight-line drawing or the number of arcs in a circular-arc drawing (in 2D). Recently, Chaplick et al. [GD 2016] introduced a different measure for the visual complexity, the \emph{affine cover number}, which is the minimum number of lines (or planes) that together cover a crossing-free straight-line drawing of a graph $G$ in 2D (3D). In this paper, we introduce the \emph{spherical cover number}, which is the minimum number of circ…
Using Reinforcement Learning to Optimize the Global and Local Crossing Number
Technical University of Munich, Heilbronn, Germany（慕尼黑技术大学（海因斯贝格））；John Cabot University, Rome, Italy（约翰·卡博特大学）；Technical University of Munich, Garching, Germany（慕尼黑技术大学（戈林根））
Given an n-vertex graph G, a drawing of G in the plane is a mapping of its vertices into points of the plane, and its edges into continuous curves, connecting the images of their endpoints. A crossing in such a drawing is a point where two such curves intersect. In the Minimum Crossing Number problem, the goal is to find a drawing of G with minimum number of crossings. The value of the optimal solution, denoted by OPT, is called the graph's crossing number. This is a very basic problem in topological graph theory, that has received a significant amount of attention, but is still poorly underst…
The Harary--Hill conjecture, still open after more than 50 years, asserts that the crossing number of the complete graph $K_n$ is $ H(n) = \frac 1 4 \left\lfloor\frac{\mathstrut n}{\mathstrut 2}\right\rfloor \left\lfloor\frac{\mathstrut n-1}{\mathstrut 2}\right\rfloor \left\lfloor\frac{\mathstrut n-2}{\mathstrut 2}\right\rfloor \left\lfloor\frac{\mathstrut n-3}{\mathstrut 2}\right \rfloor$. Ábrego et al. introduced the notion of shellability of a drawing $D$ of $K_n$. They proved that if $D$ is $s$-shellable for some $s\geq\lfloor\frac{n}{2}\rfloor$, then $D$ has at least $H(n)$ crossings. Thi…
