Papers for

graph drawing software developers

Papers whose findings have a practical use for this group, as judged from the abstract. Open a paper to read what it means in practice.

Archdeacon conjecture bounds nonplanar quadruples in rotation systems

Some results on Archdeacon's conjecture for rotation systems

Abstract: A rotation system on $n$ elements assigns to each element a cyclic order of the other $n-1$ elements. A four-element subset is non-planar if its induced rotation system cannot be realized by a crossing-free drawing of $K_4$. As a combinatorial strengthening of Hill's conjecture on the crossing number of the complete graph, Archdeacon conjectured that every rotation system on $n$ elements has at least $H(n)=\frac{1}{4} \lfloor\frac {n}{2}\rfloor \lfloor\frac{n-1}{2}\rfloor \lfloor\frac{n-2}{2}\rfloor \lfloor\frac{n-3}{2}\rfloor$ non-planar four-element subsets. We computationally verify Archdeacon's conjecture for $n\leq 10$ and show that every extremal rotation system in these orders is realizable by a simple drawing. With computer assistance, we prove that every rotation system on $n$ elements has at least $(8/9 - o(1)) H(n)$ non-planar four-element subsets. We also present a proof by hand for a weaker lower bound of $(2/3-o(1)) H(n)$. Finally, extending recent work of Felsner on antipodal pairs in drawings, we show that Archdeacon's conjecture holds for antipodally shellable rotation systems.

Thu 10 SeptComputational Geometry
The gist
A rotation system arranges elements so their connections have a circular order. The paper studies how many groups of four elements must create some unavoidable 'crossings' in such systems, a problem linked to drawing complete graphs without overlaps. The authors confirm a longstanding conjecture for small sizes using computers and provide approximate bounds for larger sizes, partly by hand. They also prove the conjecture for a certain special class of these systems. This helps understand the limits of how 'tangled' such arrangements must be.
Open 2609.11599v1

Universal small point sets improve planar graph drawings

Almost Linear Universal Point Sets for Planar Graphs

Abstract: A point set is universal for planar graphs on $n$ vertices if every such graph has a straight-line drawing without crossings whose vertices belong to the set. We construct universal point sets of size $n^{1+o(1)}$, improving the previous quadratic upper bound. Our construction uses the reduction of Bannister, Cheng, Devanny, and Eppstein from universal point sets to superpatterns for $213$-avoiding permutations. We represent these permutations by ordered rooted forests and construct a small family of intervals containing every such forest. The result follows from a straightforward bound on the size of the family of intervals. GPT-6 Astra assisted in developing the construction and proof.

Thu 10 SeptComputational Geometry
The gist
Drawing any network without lines crossing can be tricky. The authors found a way to pick almost the smallest number of points needed so that any network with a certain number of points can be drawn without overlaps using those points. They built on earlier work linking these drawings to special sequences called permutations. This helps to better understand how to arrange points for neat network drawings.
Open 2609.10916v1