Torsten Ueckerdt

Karlsruhe Institute of Technology | KIT · Institute of Theoretical Informatics

Some of the most important open problems for linear layouts of graphs ask for the relation between a graph's queue number and its stack number or mixed number. In such, we seek a vertex order and edge partition of $G$ into parts with pairwise non-crossing edges (a stack) or with pairwise non-nesting edges (a queue). Allowing only stacks, only queue...

A graph class $\mathcal{G}$ admits product structure if there exists a constant $k$ such that every $G \in \mathcal{G}$ is a subgraph of $H \boxtimes P$ for a path $P$ and some graph $H$ of treewidth $k$. Famously, the class of planar graphs, as well as many beyond-planar graph classes are known to admit product structure. However, we have only few...

For a class of drawings of loopless (multi‐)graphs in the plane, a drawing is saturated when the addition of any edge to results in —this is analogous to saturated graphs in a graph class as introduced by Turán and Erdős, Hajnal, and Moon. We focus on ‐planar drawings, that is, graphs drawn in the plane where each edge is crossed at most times, and...

We show that every graph with pathwidth strictly less than a that contains no path on \(2^b\) vertices as a subgraph has treedepth at most 10ab. The bound is best possible up to a constant factor.

We consider “surrounding” versions of the classic Cops and Robber game. The game is played on a connected graph in which two players, one controlling a number of cops and the other controlling a robber, take alternating turns. In a turn, each player may move each of their pieces. The robber always moves between adjacent vertices. Regarding the move...

A subset $M$ of the edges of a graph or hypergraph is hitting if $M$ covers each vertex of $H$ at least once, and $M$ is $t$-shallow if it covers each vertex of $H$ at most $t$ times. We consider the existence of shallow hitting edge sets and the maximum size of shallow edge sets in $r$-uniform hypergraph $H$ that are regular or have a large minimu...

A RAC graph is one admitting a RAC drawing, that is, a polyline drawing in which each crossing occurs at a right angle. Originally motivated by psychological studies on readability of graph layouts, RAC graphs form one of the most prominent graph classes in beyond planarity. In this work, we study a subclass of RAC graphs, called axis-parallel RAC...

Graph embedding, especially as a subgraph of a grid, is an old topic in VLSI design and graph drawing. In this paper, we investigate related questions concerning the complexity of embedding a graph $G$ in a host graph that is the strong product of a path $P$ with a graph $H$ that satisfies some properties, such as having small treewidth, pathwidth...

A set $S\subseteq V$ of vertices of a graph $G$ is a \emph{$c$-clustered set} if it induces a subgraph with components of order at most $c$ each, and $\alpha_c(G)$ denotes the size of a largest $c$-clustered set. For any graph $G$ on $n$ vertices and treewidth $k$, we show that $\alpha_c(G) \geq \frac{c}{c+k+1}n$, which improves a result of Wood [a...

We consider "surrounding" versions of the classic Cops and Robber game. The game is played on a connected graph in which two players, one controlling a number of cops and the other controlling a robber, take alternating turns. In a turn, each player may move each of their pieces: The robber always moves between adjacent vertices. Regarding the move...

We show that every graph with pathwidth strictly less than $a$ that contains no path on $2^b$ vertices as a subgraph has treedepth at most $10ab$. The bound is best possible up to a constant factor.

Cops and Robber is a family of two-player games played on graphs in which one player controls a number of cops and the other player controls a robber. In alternating turns, each player moves (all) his/her figures. The cops try to capture the robber while the latter tries to flee indefinitely. In this paper we consider a variant of the game played o...

The stack number of a directed acyclic graph $G$ is the minimum $k$ for which there is a topological ordering of $G$ and a $k$-coloring of the edges such that no two edges of the same color cross, i.e., have alternating endpoints along the topological ordering. We prove that the stack number of directed acyclic outerplanar graphs is bounded by a co...

A polychromatic k-coloring of a hypergraph assigns to each vertex one of k colors in such a way that every hyperedge contains all the colors. A range capturing hypergraph is an m-uniform hypergraph whose vertices are points in the plane and whose hyperedges are those m-subsets of points that can be separated by some geometric object of a particular...

Dujmović, Joret, Micek, Morin, Ueckerdt and Wood [J. ACM 2020] proved that for every planar graph $G$ there is a graph $H$ with treewidth at most 8 and a path $P$ such that $G\subseteq H\boxtimes P$. We improve this result by replacing "treewidth at most 8" by "simple treewidth at most 6".

It follows from the work of Tait and the Four-Color-Theorem that a planar cubic graph is 3-edge-colorable if and only if it contains no bridge. We consider the question of which planar graphs are subgraphs of planar cubic bridgeless graphs, and hence 3-edge-colorable. We provide an efficient recognition algorithm that given an $n$-vertex planar gra...

Two boxes in $\mathbb{R}^d$ are comparable if one of them is a subset of a translation of the other one. The comparable box dimension of a graph $G$ is the minimum integer $d$ such that $G$ can be represented as a touching graph of comparable axis-aligned boxes in $\mathbb{R}^d$. We show that proper minor-closed classes have bounded comparable box...

The queue-number of a poset is the queue-number of its cover graph viewed as a directed acyclic graph, i.e., when the vertex order must be a linear extension of the poset. Heath and Pemmaraju conjectured that every poset of width w has queue-number at most w. Recently, Alam et al. constructed posets of width w with queue-number \(w+1\). Our contrib...

A page (queue) with respect to a vertex ordering of a graph is a set of edges such that no two edges cross (nest), i.e., have their endpoints ordered in an abab-pattern (abba-pattern). A union page (union queue) is a vertex-disjoint union of pages (queues). The union page number (union queue number) of a graph is the smallest k such that there is a...

For a class \(\mathcal {D}\) of drawings of loopless (multi-)graphs in the plane, a drawing \(D \in \mathcal {D}\) is saturated when the addition of any edge to D results in \(D' \notin \mathcal {D}\)—this is analogous to saturated graphs in a graph class as introduced by Turán (1941) and Erdős, Hajnal, and Moon (1964). We focus on k-planar drawing...

We consider the polychromatic coloring problems for unions of two or more geometric hypergraphs on the same vertex sets of points in the plane. We show, inter alia, that the union of bottomless rectangles and horizontal strips does in general not allow for polychromatic colorings. This strengthens the corresponding result of Chen, Pach, Szegedy, an...

The task of the Wind Farm Cable Layout Problem is to design a cable system between turbines and substations such that all turbine output can be transmitted to the substations. This problem can be modelled with different levels of complexity. While a higher level of complexity yields solutions that can be implemented in a real-world setting more rea...

The queue-number of a poset is the queue-number of its cover graph viewed as a directed acyclic graph, i.e., when the vertex order must be a linear extension of the poset. Heath and Pemmaraju conjectured that every poset of width $w$ has queue-number at most $w$. Recently, Alam et al. constructed posets of width $w$ with queue-number $w+1$. Our con...

A page (queue) with respect to a vertex ordering of a graph is a set of edges such that no two edges cross (nest), i.e., have their endpoints ordered in an ABAB-pattern (ABBA-pattern). A union page (union queue) is a vertex-disjoint union of pages (queues). The union page number (union queue number) of a graph is the smallest $ k $ such that there...

Dujmovi\'c, Joret, Micek, Morin, Ueckerdt and Wood [J. ACM 2020] proved that for every planar graph $G$ there is a graph $H$ with treewidth at most 8 and a path $P$ such that $G\subseteq H\boxtimes P$. We improve this result by replacing "treewidth at most 8" by "simple treewidth at most 6".

The page number of a directed acyclic graph $G$ is the minimum $k$ for which there is a topological ordering of $G$ and a $k$-coloring of the edges such that no two edges of the same color cross, i.e., have alternating endpoints along the topological ordering. We address the long-standing open problem asking for the largest page number among all up...

Weak and strong coloring numbers are generalizations of the degeneracy of a graph, where for each natural number $k$, we seek a vertex ordering such every vertex can (weakly respectively strongly) reach in $k$ steps only few vertices with lower index in the ordering. Both notions capture the sparsity of a graph or a graph class, and have interestin...

For a planar graph G and a set \(\varPi \) of simple paths in G, we define a metro-map embedding to be a planar embedding of G and an ordering of the paths of \(\varPi \) along each edge of G. This definition of a metro-map embedding is motivated by visual representations of hypergraphs using the metro-map metaphor. In a metro-map embedding, two pa...

The interval number of a graph G is the minimum k such that one can assign to each vertex of G a union of k intervals on the real line, such that G is the intersection graph of these sets, i.e., two vertices are adjacent in G if and only if the corresponding sets of intervals have non-empty intersection. Scheinerman and West (1983) [14] proved that...

Let $G$ be a multigraph with $n$ vertices and $e>4n$ edges, drawn in the plane such that any two parallel edges form a simple closed curve with at least one vertex in its interior and at least one vertex in its exterior. Pach and Tóth [A Crossing Lemma for Multigraphs, SoCG 2018] extended the Crossing Lemma of Ajtai et al. [Crossing-free subgraphs,...

For a class $\mathcal{D}$ of drawings of loopless multigraphs in the plane, a drawing $D \in \mathcal{D}$ is saturated when the addition of any edge to $D$ results in $D' \notin \mathcal{D}$. This is analogous to saturated graphs in a graph class as introduced by Tur\'an (1941) and Erd\H{o}s, Hajnal, and Moon (1964). We focus on $k$-planar drawings...

Let \(G = (V,E)\) be a plane graph. A face f of G is guarded by an edge \(vw \in E\) if at least one vertex from \(\{v,w\}\) is on the boundary of f. For a planar graph class \(\mathcal {G}\) we ask for the minimal number of edges needed to guard all faces of any n-vertex graph in \(\mathcal {G}\). We prove that \(\lfloor n/3 \rfloor \) edges are a...

Planar bipartite graphs can be represented as touching graphs of horizontal and vertical segments in \(\mathbb {R}^2\). We study a generalization in space, namely, touching graphs of axis-aligned rectangles in \(\mathbb {R}^3\). We prove that planar 3-colorable graphs can be represented as touching graphs of axis-aligned rectangles in \(\mathbb {R}...

A queue layout of a graph $G$ consists of a vertex ordering of $G$ and a partition of the edges into so-called queues such that no two edges in the same queue nest, i.e., have their endpoints ordered in an ABBA-pattern. Continuing the research on local ordered covering numbers, we introduce the local queue number of a graph $G$ as the minimum $\ell...

Planar bipartite graphs can be represented as touching graphs of horizontal and vertical segments in $\mathbb{R}^2$. We study a generalization in space, namely, touching graphs of axis-aligned rectangles in $\mathbb{R}^3$. We prove that planar $3$-colorable graphs can be represented as touching graphs of axis-aligned rectangles in $\mathbb{R}^3$. T...

Let $G = (V,E)$ be a plane graph. A face $f$ of $G$ is guarded by an edge $vw \in E$ if at least one vertex from $\{v,w\}$ is on the boundary of $f$. For a planar graph class $\mathcal{G}$ we ask for the minimal number of edges needed to guard all faces of any $n$-vertex graph in $\mathcal{G}$. We prove that $\lfloor n/3 \rfloor$ edges are always s...

We show that planar graphs have bounded queue-number, thus proving a conjecture of Heath et al. [66] from 1992. The key to the proof is a new structural tool called layered partitions , and the result that every planar graph has a vertex-partition and a layering, such that each part has a bounded number of vertices in each layer, and the quotient g...

An embedding of a graph in a book consists of a linear order of its vertices along the spine of the book and of an assignment of its edges to the pages of the book, so that no two edges on the same page cross. The book thickness of a graph is the minimum number of pages over all its book embeddings. Accordingly, the book thickness of a class of gra...

We study covering numbers and local covering numbers with respect to difference graphs and complete bipartite graphs. In particular we show that in every cover of a Young diagram with $\binom{2k}{k}$ steps with generalized rectangles there is a row or a column in the diagram that is used by at least $k+1$ rectangles, and prove that this is best-pos...

A queue layout of a graph G consists of a vertex ordering of G and a partition of the edges into so-called queues such that no two edges in the same queue nest, i.e., have their endpoints ordered in an ABBA-pattern. Continuing the research on local ordered covering numbers, we introduce the local queue number of a graph G as the minimum \(\ell \) s...

We introduce the novel concepts of local and union book embeddings, and, as the corresponding graph parameters, the local page number \({\text {pn}}_\ell (G)\) and the union page number \({\text {pn}}_u(G)\). Both parameters are relaxations of the classical page number \({\text {pn}}(G)\), and for every graph G we have \({\text {pn}}_\ell (G) \leqs...

We say that a graph $H$ is planar unavoidable if there is a planar graph $G$ such that any red/blue coloring of the edges of $G$ contains a monochromatic copy of $H$, otherwise we say that $H$ is planar avoidable. That is, $H$ is planar unavoidable if there is a Ramsey graph for $H$ that is planar. It follows from the Four-Color Theorem and a resul...

In a wind farm turbines convert wind energy into electrical energy. The generation of each turbine is transmitted, possibly via other turbines, to a substation that is connected to the power grid. On every possible interconnection there can be at most one of various different cable types. Each type comes with a cost per unit length and with a capac...

We introduce the novel concepts of local and union book embeddings, and, as the corresponding graph parameters, the local page number ${\rm pn}_\ell(G)$ and the union page number ${\rm pn}_u(G)$. Both parameters are relaxations of the classical page number ${\rm pn}(G)$, and for every graph $G$ we have ${\rm pn}_\ell(G) \leq {\rm pn}_u(G) \leq {\rm...

A queue layout of a graph consists of a linear order of its vertices and a partition of its edges into queues, so that no two independent edges of the same queue are nested. The queue number of a graph is the minimum number of queues required by any of its queue layouts. A long-standing conjecture by Heath, Leighton and Rosenberg states that the qu...

We show that planar graphs have bounded queue-number, thus proving a conjecture of Heath, Leighton and Rosenberg from 1992. The key to the proof is a new structural tool called layered $H$-partitions, and the result that every planar graph has such a partition of bounded layered width in which $H$ has bounded treewidth. These results generalise for...

We prove that in every cover of a Young diagram with $\binom{2k}{k}$ steps with generalized rectangles there is a row or a column in the diagram that is used by at least $k+1$ rectangles. We show that this is best-possible by partitioning any Young diagram with $\binom{2k}{k}-1$ steps into actual rectangles, each row and each column used by at most...

We say that a graph $H$ is planar unavoidable if there is a planar graph $G$ such that any red/blue coloring of the edges of $G$ contains a monochromatic copy of $H$, otherwise we say that $H$ is planar avoidable. I.e., $H$ is planar unavoidable if there is a Ramsey graph for $H$ that is planar. It follows from the Four-Color Theorem and a result o...

In the original publication of this article (Gritzbach et al., 2018), an incorrect version of Algorithm 1 was used. In this correction article the corrected version of Algorithm 1 is shown. The original publication of this article has been corrected.

A queue layout of a graph consists of a linear order of its vertices and a partition of its edges into queues, so that no two independent edges of the same queue are nested. The queue number of a graph is the minimum number of queues required by any of its queue layouts. A long-standing conjecture by Heath, Leighton and Rosenberg states that the qu...

In the Wind Farm Cabling Problem (WCP) the task is to design the internal cabling of a wind farm such that all power from the turbines can be transmitted to the substations and the costs for the cabling are minimized. Cables can be chosen from several available cable types, each of which has a thermal capacity and cost. Until now, solution approach...

Heath and Pemmaraju [9] conjectured that the queue-number of a poset is bounded by its width and if the poset is planar then also by its height. We show that there are planar posets whose queue-number is larger than their height, refuting the second conjecture. On the other hand, we show that any poset of width 2 has queue-number at most 2, thus co...

Let G be a multigraph with n vertices and \(e>4n\) edges, drawn in the plane such that any two parallel edges form a simple closed curve with at least one vertex in its interior and at least one vertex in its exterior. Pach and Tóth [5] extended the Crossing Lemma of Ajtai et al. [1] and Leighton [3] by showing that if no two adjacent edges cross a...

Let $G$ be a multigraph with $n$ vertices and $e>4n$ edges, drawn in the plane such that any two parallel edges form a simple closed curve with at least one vertex in its interior and at least one vertex in its exterior. Pach and T\'oth (2018) extended the Crossing Lemma of Ajtai et al. (1982) and Leighton (1983) by showing that if no two adjacent...

Heath and Pemmaraju conjectured that the queue-number of a poset is bounded by its width and if the poset is planar then also by its height. We show that there are planar posets whose queue-number is larger than their height, refuting the second conjecture. On the other hand, we show that any poset of width $2$ has queue-number at most $2$, thus co...

The interval number of a graph $G$ is the minimum $k$ such that one can assign to each vertex of $G$ a union of $k$ intervals on the real line, such that $G$ is the intersection graph of these sets, i.e., two vertices are adjacent in $G$ if and only if the corresponding sets of intervals have non-empty intersection. In 1983 Scheinerman and West [Th...

We define the induced arboricity of a graph $G$, denoted by ${\rm ia}(G)$, as the smallest $k$ such that the edges of $G$ can be covered with $k$ induced forests in $G$. This notion generalizes the classical notions of the arboricity and strong chromatic index. For a class $\mathcal{F}$ of graphs and a graph parameter $p$, let $p(\mathcal{F}) = \su...

Beyond-planarity focuses on the study of geometric and topological graphs that are in some sense nearly-planar. Here, planarity is relaxed by allowing edge crossings, but only with respect to some local forbidden crossing configurations. Early research dates back to the 1960s (e.g., Avital and Hanani 1966) for extremal problems on geometric graphs,...

Refining a classical proof of Whitney, we show that any $4$-connected planar triangulation can be decomposed into a Hamiltonian path and two trees. Therefore, every $4$-connected planar graph decomposes into three forests, one having maximum degree at most $2$. We use this result to show that any Hamiltonian planar triangulation can be decomposed i...

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, t...

An ordered graph $G$ is a graph whose vertex set is a subset of integers. The edges are interpreted as tuples $(u,v)$ with $u < v$. For a positive integer $s$, a matrix $M \in \mathbb{Z}^{s \times 4}$, and a vector $\mathbf{p} = (p,\ldots,p) \in \mathbb{Z}^s$ we build a conflict graph by saying that edges $(u,v)$ and $(x,y)$ are conflicting if $M(u...

The boxicity $\operatorname{box}(H)$ of a graph $H$ is the smallest integer $d$ such that $H$ is the intersection of $d$ interval graphs, or equivalently, that $H$ is the intersection graph of axis-aligned boxes in $\mathbb{R}^d$. These intersection representations can be interpreted as covering representations of the complement $H^c$ of $H$ with c...

The induced arboricity of a graph $G$ is the smallest number of induced forests covering the edges of $G$. This is a well-defined parameter bounded from above by the number of edges of $G$ when each forest in a cover consists of exactly one edge. Not all edges of a graph necessarily belong to induced forests with larger components. For $k\geq 1$, w...

It is well-known that the graphs not containing a given graph H as a subgraph have bounded chromatic number if and only if H is acyclic. Here we consider ordered graphs, i.e., graphs with a linear ordering on their vertex set, and the function f(H) = sup{chi(G) | G in Forb(H)} where Forb(H) denotes the set of all ordered graphs that do not contain...

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...

In the concurrent graph sharing game, two players, called First and Second, share the vertices of a connected graph with positive vertex-weights summing up to $1$ as follows. The game begins with First taking any vertex. In each proceeding round, the player with the smaller sum of collected weights so far chooses a non-taken vertex adjacent to a ve...

We consider arrangements of axis-aligned rectangles in the plane. A geometric arrangement specifies the coordinates of all rectangles, while a combinatorial arrangement specifies only the respective intersection type in which each pair of rectangles intersects. First, we investigate combinatorial contact arrangements, i.e., arrangements of interior...

We study contact representations of non-planar graphs in which vertices are represented by axis-aligned polyhedra in 3D and edges are realized by non-zero area common boundaries between corresponding polyhedra. We present a liner-time algorithm constructing a representation of a 3-connected planar graph, its dual, and the vertex-face incidence grap...

We study representations of graphs by contacts of circular arcs, CCA-representations for short, where the vertices are interior-disjoint circular arcs in the plane and each edge is realized by an endpoint of one arc touching the interior of another. A graph is (2, k)-sparse if every s-vertex subgraph has at most \(2s-k\) edges, and (2, k)-tight if...

Recently, Borodin, Kostochka, and Yancey (On $1$-improper $2$-coloring of sparse graphs. Discrete Mathematics, 313(22), 2013) showed that the vertices of each planar graph of girth at least $7$ can be $2$-colored so that each color class induces a subgraph of a matching. We prove that any planar graph of girth at least $6$ admits a vertex coloring...

A mixed hypergraph is a triple $H=(V,\mathcal{C},\mathcal{D})$, where $V$ is a set of vertices, $\mathcal{C}$ and $\mathcal{D}$ are sets of hyperedges. A vertex-coloring of $H$ is proper if $C$-edges are not totally multicolored and $D$-edges are not monochromatic. The feasible set $S(H)$ of $H$ is the set of all integers, $s$, such that $H$ has a...

We study contact representations for graphs, which we call pixel representations in 2D and voxel representations in 3D. Our representations are based on the unit square grid whose cells we call pixels in 2D and voxels in 3D. Two pixels are adjacent if they share an edge, two voxels if they share a face. We call a connected set of pixels or voxels a...

Given a graph H, a graph G is called a Ramsey graph of H if there is a monochromatic copy of H in every coloring of the edges of G with two colors. Two graphs G, H are called Ramsey equivalent if they have the same set of Ramsey graphs. Fox et al. [J. Combin. Theory Ser. B 109 (2014), 120--133] asked whether there are two non-isomorphic connected g...

We study contact representations of graphs in which vertices are represented by axis-aligned polyhedra in 3D and edges are realized by non-zero area common boundaries between corresponding polyhedra. We show that for every 3-connected planar graph, there exists a simultaneous representation of the graph and its dual with 3D boxes. We give a linear-...

We study representations of graphs by contacts of circular arcs, CCA-representations for short, where the vertices are interior-disjoint circular arcs in the plane and each edge is realized by an endpoint of one arc touching the interior of another. A graph is (2,k)-sparse if every s-vertex subgraph has at most 2s - k edges, and (2, k)-tight if in...

We consider the weighted version of the Tron game on graphs where two players, Alice and Bob, each build their own path by claiming one vertex at a time, starting with Alice. The vertices carry non-negative weights that sum up to 1 and either player tries to claim a path with larger total weight than the opponent. We show that if the graph is a tre...

We study on-line colorings of certain graphs given as intersection graphs of objects "between two lines", i.e., there is a pair of horizontal lines such that each object of the representation is a connected set contained in the strip between the lines and touches both. Some of the graph classes admitting such a representation are permutation graphs...

A basic pigeonhole principle insures an existence of two objects of the same type if the number of objects is larger than the number of types. Can such a principle be extended to a more complex combinatorial structure? Here, we address such a question for graphs. We call two disjoint subsets A, B of vertices twins if they have the same cardinality...