We efficiently conflict-free color every planar graph with 4 colors. An (open-neighborhood) conflict-free coloring assigns colors to vertices in a way that every vertex v has a neighbor w such that the color of w is distinct from the colors of the other neighbors of v (i.e., the color of w is unique in the open neighborhood of v). A previous best upper bound on the conflict-free chromatic number of planar graphs was 5, and it is known that 4 colors are sometimes necessary. Deciding whether, e.g., a planar graph admits a conflict-free coloring with 3 colors is NP-complete. Our approach uses a refined variant of the classical Gallai-Edmonds decomposition and the Four Color Theorem. In fact, our result is equivalent to the Four Color Theorem.

In a quest to thoroughly understand the first-order transduction hierarchy of hereditary graph classes, some questions in particular stand out; such as, what properties hold for graph classes that are first-order transductions of planar graphs (and of similar classes)? When addressing this (so-far wide open) question, we turn to the concept of a product structure – being a subgraph of the strong product of a path and a graph of bounded tree-width, introduced by Dujmović et al. [JACM 2020]. Namely, we prove that any graph class which is a first-order transduction of a class admitting such product structure, up to perturbations also meets a structural description generalizing the concept of a product structure in a dense hereditary way—the latter concept being introduced just recently by authors under the name of $\mathcal{H}$-clique-width [MFCS 2024].Using this characterization, we show that the class of the 3D grids, as well as a class of certain modifications of 2D grids, are not first-order transducible from classes admitting a product structure, and in particular not from the class of planar graphs.

We deal with the problem of computing the exact crossing number of almost planar graphs and the closely related problem of computing the exact anchored crossing number of a pair of planar graphs. It was shown by [Cabello and Mohar, 2013] that both problems are NP-hard; although they required an unbounded number of high-degree vertices (in the first problem) or an unbounded number of anchors (in the second problem) to prove their result. Somehow surprisingly, only three vertices of degree greater than 3 altogether, or only three anchors per each of the two graphs, are sufficient to maintain hardness of these problems, as we prove here. The new result also improves the previous result on hardness of joint crossing number on surfaces by [Hliněný and Salazar, 2015]. Our result is best possible in the anchored case since the anchored crossing number of a pair of planar graphs with two anchors each is trivial, and close to being best possible in the almost planar case since the crossing number is polytime computable for almost planar graphs of maximum degree 3 [Riskin 1996, Cabello and Mohar 2011]. The complexity of crossing number of almost planar graphs with one or two vertices of degree greater than 3 is, interestingly, still wide open.

Abstract. Twin-width is a structural width parameter introduced by Bonnet, Kim, Thomassé and Watrigant [FOCS 2020] and has interesting applications in the areas of logic on graphs and in parameterized algorithmics. Very briefly, the essence of twin-width is in a gradual reduction (a contraction sequence) of the given graph down to a single vertex while maintaining limited difference in the neighborhoods of the vertices, and it can be seen as widely generalizing several other traditional structural parameters. While for many natural graph classes, it is known that their twin-width is bounded, and published upper bounds on the twin-width in nontrivial cases are very often “astronomically large,” We focus on planar graphs, which are known to already have bounded twin-width since its introduction, but it took some time for the first explicit “nonastronomical” upper bounds to come. Namely, in the order of preprint appearance, the bound was at most 183 by Jacob and Pilipczuk [arXiv, January 2022], and 583 by Bonnet, Kwon and Wood [arXiv, February 2022]. Subsequent arXiv manuscripts in 2022 improved the bound down to 37 (Bekos et al.) and 11 and 9 (both by Hliněný). We further elaborate on the approach used in the latter manuscripts, proving that the twin-width of every planar graph is at most 8 and construct a witnessing contraction sequence in linear time. Note that the currently best lower-bound planar example is of twin-width 7 by Král’ and Lamaison [arXiv, September 2022]. We also prove small explicit upper bounds on the twin-width of bipartite planar and 1-planar graphs (6 and 16) and of map graphs (38). The common denominator of all these results is the use of a novel specially crafted recursive decomposition of planar graphs, which may be found useful also in other areas.

Visualizing a graph $G$ in the plane nicely, for example, without crossings, is unfortunately not always possible. To address this problem, Masařík and Hliněný [GD 2023] recently asked for each edge of $G$ to be drawn without crossings while allowing multiple different drawings of $G$. More formally, a collection $\mathcal{D}$ of drawings of $G$ is uncrossed if, for each edge $e$ of $G$, there is a drawing in $\mathcal{D}$ such that $e$ is uncrossed. The uncrossed number $\mathrm{unc}(G)$ of $G$ is then the minimum number of drawings in some uncrossed collection of $G$. No exact values of the uncrossed numbers have been determined yet, not even for simple graph classes. In this paper, we provide the exact values for uncrossed numbers of complete and complete bipartite graphs, partly confirming and partly refuting a conjecture posed by Hliněný and Masařík. We also present a strong general lower bound on $\mathrm{unc}(G)$ in terms of the number of vertices and edges of $G$. Moreover, we prove NP-hardness of the related problem of determining the edge crossing number of a graph $G$, which is the smallest number of edges of $G$ taken over all drawings of $G$ that participate in a crossing. This problem was posed as open by Schaefer in his book [Crossing Numbers of Graphs 2018].

The k-planar graphs, which are (usually with small values of k such as 1,2,3) subject to recent intense research, admit a drawing in which edges are allowed to cross, but each one edge is allowed to carry at most k crossings. In recently introduced [Binucci et al., GD 2023] min-k-planar drawings of graphs, edges may possibly carry more than k crossings, but in any two crossing edges, at least one of the two must have at most k crossings. In both concepts, one may consider general drawings or a popular restricted concept of drawings called simple. In a simple drawing, every two edges are allowed to cross at most once, and any two edges which share a vertex are forbidden to cross. While, regarding the former concept, it is for k ≤ 3 known (but perhaps not widely known) that every general k-planar graph admits a simple k-planar drawing and this ceases to be true for any k ≤ 4, the difference between general and simple drawings in the latter concept is more striking. We prove that there exist graphs with a min-2-planar drawing, or with a min-3-planar drawing avoiding crossings of adjacent edges, which have no simple min-k-planar drawings for arbitrarily large fixed k.

Crossing Number is a celebrated problem in graph drawing. It is known to be NP-complete since the 1980s, and fairly involved techniques were already required to show its fixed-parameter tractability when parameterized by the vertex cover number. In this paper we prove that computing exactly the crossing number is NP-hard even for graphs of path-width 12 (and as a result, for simple graphs of path-width 13 and tree-width 9). Thus, while tree-width and path-width have been very successful tools in many graph algorithm scenarios, our result shows that general crossing number computations unlikely (under P≠ NP) could be successfully tackled using graph decompositions of bounded width, what has been a "tantalizing open problem" [S. Cabello, Hardness of Approximation for Crossing Number, 2013] till now.

We introduce H-clique-width, a new structural measure of graphs that aims to provide a hereditary analogue of the traditional graph product structure. The definition naturally generalises the ordinary clique-width concept. As a result, for a class H of graphs (such as the class of paths), the H-clique-width of a graph G equals the least integer t such that G is isomorphic to an induced subgraph of the strong product of a graph from H and a graph of clique-width t. We study basic properties of H-clique-width and compare it to other established structural parameters of graphs. Notably, we prove that the celebrated Planar graph product structure theorem by Dujmovic et al., and related graph product structure results, can all be formulated with the induced subgraph containment relation. In particular, every planar graph is isomorphic to an induced subgraph of the strong product of a path and a graph of tree-width 39.

Twin-width is a structural width parameter introduced by Bonnet, Kim, Thomassé and Watrigant [FOCS 2020]. Very briefly, its essence is a gradual reduction (a contraction sequence) of the given graph down to a single vertex while maintaining limited difference of neighbourhoods of the vertices, and it can be seen as widely generalizing several other traditional structural parameters. Having such a sequence at hand allows us to solve many otherwise hard problems efficiently. Graph classes of bounded twin-width, in which appropriate contraction sequences are efficiently constructible, are thus of interest in combinatorics and in computer science. However, we currently do not know in general how to obtain a witnessing contraction sequence of low width efficiently, and published upper bounds on the twin-width in non-trivial cases are often "astronomically large". We focus on planar graphs, which are known to have bounded twin-width (already since the introduction of twin-width), but the first explicit "non-astronomical" upper bounds on the twin-width of planar graphs appeared just a year ago; namely the bound of at most 183 by Jacob and Pilipczuk [arXiv, January 2022], and 583 by Bonnet, Kwon and Wood [arXiv, February 2022]. Subsequent arXiv manuscripts in 2022 improved the bound down to 37 (Bekos et al.), 11 and 9 (both by Hliněný). We further elaborate on the approach used in the latter manuscripts, proving that the twin-width of every planar graph is at most 8, and construct a witnessing contraction sequence in linear time. Note that the currently best lower-bound planar example is of twin-width 7, by Král' and Lamaison [arXiv, September 2022]. We also prove that the twin-width of every bipartite planar graph is at most 6, and again construct a witnessing contraction sequence in linear time.

In 1992 Biró, Hujter and Tuza introduced, for every fixed connected graph $H$, the class of $H$-graphs, defined as the intersection graphs of connected subgraphs of some subdivision of $H$. Recently, quite a lot of research has been devoted to understanding the tractability border for various computational problems, such as recognition or isomorphism testing, in classes of $H$-graphs for different graphs $H$. In this work we undertake this research topic, focusing on the recognition problem. Chaplick, Töpfer, Voborn\'ık, and Zeman showed, for every fixed tree $T$, a polynomial-time algorithm recognizing $T$-graphs. Tucker showed a polynomial time algorithm recognizing $K_3$-graphs (circular-arc graphs). On the other hand, Chaplick at al. showed that recognition of $H$-graphs is $NP$-hard if $H$ contains two different cycles sharing an edge. The main two results of this work narrow the gap between the $NP$-hard and $P$ cases of $H$-graphs recognition. First, we show that recognition of $H$-graphs is $NP$-hard when $H$ contains two different cycles. On the other hand, we show a polynomial-time algorithm recognizing $L$-graphs, where $L$ is a graph containing a cycle and an edge attached to it ($L$-graphs are called lollipop graphs). Our work leaves open the recognition problems of $M$-graphs for every unicyclic graph $M$ different from a cycle and a lollipop. Other results of this work, which shed some light on the cases that remain open, are as follows. Firstly, the recognition of $M$-graphs, where $M$ is a fixed unicyclic graph, admits a polynomial time algorithm if we restrict the input to graphs containing particular holes (hence recognition of $M$-graphs is probably most difficult for chordal graphs). Secondly, the recognition of medusa graphs, which are defined as the union of $M$-graphs, where $M$ runs over all unicyclic graphs, is $NP$-complete.

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 planarity in a very natural but intricate way. Not only do our techniques generalise the known FPT-algorithm by Grohe for computing the standard crossing number, they also allow us to substantially improve a number of recent parameterised results for various drawing extension problems.

Graph product structure theory expresses certain graphs as subgraphs of the strong product of much simpler graphs. In particular, an elegant formulation for the corresponding structural theorems involves the strong product of a path and of a bounded treewidth graph, and allows to lift combinatorial results for bounded treewidth graphs to graph classes for which the product structure holds, such as to planar graphs [Dujmović et al., J. ACM, 67(4), 22:1-38, 2020]. In this paper, we join the search for extensions of this powerful tool beyond planarity by considering the h-framed graphs, a graph class that includes 1-planar, optimal 2-planar, and k-map graphs (for appropriate values of h). We establish a graph product structure theorem for h-framed graphs stating that the graphs in this class are subgraphs of the strong product of a path, of a planar graph of treewidth at most 3, and of a clique of size 3⌊h2 ⌋ + ⌊h3 ⌋ - 1. This allows us to improve over the previous structural theorems for 1-planar and k-map graphs. Our results constitute significant progress over the previous bounds on the queue number, non-repetitive chromatic number, and p-centered chromatic number of these graph classes, e.g., we lower the currently best upper bound on the queue number of 1-planar graphs and k-map graphs from 115 to 82 and from ⌊332 (k + 3⌊k2 ⌋-3)⌋ to ⌊332 (3⌊k2 ⌋ + ⌊k3 ⌋ - 1)⌋, respectively. We also employ the product structure machinery to improve the current upper bounds on the twin-width of 1-planar graphs from O(1) to 80. All our structural results are constructive and yield efficient algorithms to obtain the corresponding decompositions.

Twin-width is a new parameter informally measuring how diverse are the neighbourhoods of the graph vertices, and it extends also to other binary relational structures, e.g. to digraphs and posets. It was introduced just very recently, in 2020 by Bonnet, Kim, Thomasse and Watrigant. One of the core results of these authors is that FO model checking on graph classes of bounded twin-width is in FPT. With that result, they also claimed that posets of bounded width have bounded twin-width, thus capturing prior result on FO model checking of posets of bounded width in FPT. However, their translation from poset width to twin-width was indirect and giving only a very loose double-exponential bound. We prove that posets of width d have twin-width at most 9d with a direct and elegant argument, and show that this bound is asymptotically tight. Specially, for posets of width 2 we prove that in the worst case their twin-width is also equal 2. These two theoretical results are complemented with straightforward algorithms to construct the respective contraction sequence for a given poset.

We initiate the study of computational complexity of graph coverings, aka locally bijective graph homomorphisms, for graphs with semi-edges. The notion of graph covering is a discretization of coverings between surfaces or topological spaces, a notion well known and deeply studied in classical topology. Graph covers have found applications in discrete mathematics for constructing highly symmetric graphs, and in computer science in the theory of local computations. In 1991, Abello et al. asked for a classification of the computational complexity of deciding if an input graph covers a fixed target graph, in the ordinary setting (of graphs with only edges). Although many general results are known, the full classification is still open. In spite of that, we propose to study the more general case of covering graphs composed of normal edges (including multiedges and loops) and so-called semi-edges. Semi-edges are becoming increasingly popular in modern topological graph theory, as well as in mathematical physics. They also naturally occur in the local computation setting, since they are lifted to matchings in the covering graph. We show that the presence of semi-edges makes the covering problem considerably harder; e.g., it is no longer sufficient to specify the vertex mapping induced by the covering, but one necessarily has to deal with the edge mapping as well. We show some solvable cases and, in particular, completely characterize the complexity of the already very nontrivial problem of covering one- and two-vertex (multi)graphs with semi-edges. Our NP-hardness results are proven for simple input graphs, and in the case of regular two-vertex target graphs, even for bipartite ones. We remark that our new characterization results also strengthen previously known results for covering graphs without semi-edges, and they in turn apply to an infinite class of simple target graphs with at most two vertices of degree more than two. Some of the results are moreover proven in a more general setting (e.g., finding k-tuples of pairwise disjoint perfect matchings in regular graphs, or finding equitable partitions of regular bipartite graphs).

An H-graph is the intersection graph of connected subgraphs of a suitable subdivision of a fixed graph H, introduced by Biró, Hujter and Tuza (1992). We focus on S_d-graphs as a special case generalizing interval graphs. A graph G is an S_d-graph iff it is the intersection graph of connected subgraphs of a subdivision of a star S_d with d rays. We give an FPT algorithm to solve the isomorphism problem for S_d-graphs with the parameter d. This solves an open problem of Chaplick, Töpfer, Voborník and Zeman (2016). In the course of our proof, we also show that the isomorphism problem of S_d-graphs is computationally at least as hard as the isomorphism problem of posets of bounded width.

We study the first-order (FO) model checking problem of dense graph classes, namely, those that have FO interpretations in (or are FO transductions of) some sparse graph classes. We give a structural characterization of the graph classes that are FO interpretable in graphs of bounded degree. This characterization allows us to efficiently compute such an FO interpretation for an input graph. As a consequence, we obtain an FPT algorithm for successor-invariant FO model checking on any graph class that is FO interpretable in (or an FO transduction of) a graph class of bounded degree. The approach we use to obtain these results may also be of independent interest.

We study $c$-crossing-critical graphs, which are the minimal graphs that require at least $c$ edge-crossings when drawn in the plane. For every fixed pair of integers with $c\ge 13$ and $d\ge 1$, we give first explicit constructions of $c$-crossing-critical graphs containing a vertex of degree greater than $d$. We also show that such unbounded degree constructions do not exist for $c\le 12$, precisely, that there exists a constant $D$ such that every $c$-crossing-critical graph with $c\le 12$ has maximum degree at most $D$. Hence, the bounded maximum degree conjecture of $c$-crossing-critical graphs, which was generally disproved in 2010 by Dvořák and Mohar (without an explicit construction), holds true, surprisingly, exactly for the values $c\le 12.$

Over the past two decades the main focus of research into first-order (FO) model checking algorithms has been on sparse relational structures – culminating in the FPT algorithm by Grohe, Kreutzer and Siebertz for FO model checking on nowhere dense classes of graphs. On contrary to that, except the case of locally bounded clique-width only little is currently known about FO model checking on dense classes of graphs or other structures. We study the FO model checking problem on dense graph classes definable by geometric means (intersection and visibility graphs). We obtain new nontrivial FPT results, e.g., for restricted subclasses of circular-arc, circle, box, disk, and polygon-visibility graphs. These results use the FPT algorithm by Gajarský et al. for FO model checking on posets of bounded width. We also complement the tractability results by related hardness reductions.

The recent increase of interest in the graph invariant called tree-depth and in its applications in algorithms and logic on graphs led to a natural question: is there an analogously useful "depth" notion also for dense graphs (say; one which is stable under graph complementation)? To this end, in a 2012 conference paper, a new notion of shrub-depth has been introduced, such that it is related to the established notion of clique-width in a similar way as tree-depth is related to tree-width. Since then shrub-depth has been successfully used in several research papers. Here we provide an in-depth review of the definition and basic properties of shrub-depth, and we focus on its logical aspects which turned out to be most useful. In particular, we use shrub-depth to give a characterization of the lower ${\omega}$ levels of the MSO1 transduction hierarchy of simple graphs.

We study c-crossing-critical graphs, which are the minimal graphs that require at least c edge-crossings when drawn in the plane. For c=1 there are only two such graphs without degree-2 vertices, K_5 and K_{3,3}, but for any fixed c>1 there exist infinitely many c-crossing-critical graphs. It has been previously shown that c-crossing-critical graphs have bounded path-width and contain only a bounded number of internally disjoint paths between any two vertices. We expand on these results, providing a more detailed description of the structure of crossing-critical graphs. On the way towards this description, we prove a new structural characterisation of plane graphs of bounded path-width. Then we show that every c-crossing-critical graph can be obtained from a c-crossing-critical graph of bounded size by replicating bounded-size parts that already appear in narrow "bands" or "fans" in the graph. This also gives an algorithm to generate all the c-crossing-critical graphs of at most given order n in polynomial time per each generated graph.

The path-width of matroids naturally generalizes the better known parameter of path-width for graphs and is NP-hard by a reduction from the graph case. While the term matroid path-width was formally introduced in [J. Geelen, B. Gerards, and G. Whittle, J. Combin. Theory Ser. B, 96 (2006), pp. 405--425] in pure matroid theory, it was soon recognized in [N. Kashyap, SIAM J. Discrete Math., 22 (2008), pp. 256--272] that it is the same concept as the long-studied so-called trellis complexity in coding theory, later named trellis-width, and hence it is an interesting notion also from the algorithmic perspective. It follows from a result of Hliněný [P. Hliněný, J. Combin. Theory Ser. B, 96 (2006), pp. 325--351] that the decision problem---whether a given matroid over a finite field has path-width at most $t$---is fixed-parameter tractable (FPT) in $t$, but this result does not give any clue about constructing a path-decomposition. The first constructive and rather complicated FPT algorithm for path-width of matroids over a finite field was given in [J. Jeong, E. J. Kim, and S. Oum, in Proceedings of the Twenty-Seventh Annual ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms, SIAM, 2016, pp. 1695--1704]. Here we propose a simpler “self-reduction” FPT algorithm for a path-decomposition. Precisely, we design an efficient routine that constructs an optimal path-decomposition of a matroid by calling any subroutine for testing whether the path-width of a matroid is at most $t$ (such as the aforementioned decision algorithm for matroid path-width).

We prove that it is NP-hard to determine whether the crossing number of an input graph is even or odd.

We study the problem of colouring the visibility graphs of polygons. In particular, we provide a polynomial algorithm for 4-colouring of the polygon visibility graphs, and prove that the 6- colourability question is already NP-complete for them.

Let G be a connected planar (but not yet embedded) graph and F a set of additional edges not in G. The multiple edge insertion problem (MEI) asks for a drawing of G+F with the minimum number of pairwise edge crossings, such that the subdrawing of G is plane. An optimal solution to this problem is known to approximate the crossing number of the graph G+F. Finding an exact solution to MEI is NP-hard for general F, but linear time solvable for the special case of |F|=1 [Gutwenger et al, SODA 2001/Algorithmica] and polynomial time solvable when all of F are incident to a new vertex [Chimani et al, SODA 2009]. The complexity for general F but with constant k=|F| was open, but algorithms both with relative and absolute approximation guarantees have been presented [Chuzhoy et al, SODA 2011], [Chimani-Hlineny, ICALP 2011]. We show that the problem is fixed parameter tractable (FPT) in k for biconnected G, or if the cut vertices of G have bounded degrees. We give the first exact algorithm for this problem; it requires only O(|V(G)|) time for any constant k.

The graph crossing number problem, cr(G)<=k, asks for a drawing of a graph G in the plane with at most k edge crossings. Although this problem is in general notoriously difficult, it is fixed-parameter tractable for the parameter k [Grohe, STOC 2001]. This suggests a closely related question of whether this problem has a polynomial kernel, meaning whether every instance of cr(G)<=k can be in polynomial time reduced to an equivalent instance of size polynomial in k (and independent of |G|). We answer this question in the negative. Along the proof we show that the tile crossing number problem of twisted planar tiles is NP-hard, which has been an open problem for some time, too, and then employ the complexity technique of cross-composition. Our result holds already for the special case of graphs obtained from planar graphs by adding one edge.

We study the FO model checking problem of dense graph classes, namely those which are FO-interpretable in some sparse graph classes. Note that if an input dense graph is given together with the corresponding FO interpretation in a sparse graph, one can easily solve the model checking problem using the existing algorithms for sparse graph classes. However, if the assumed interpretation is not given, then the situation is markedly harder.

Over the past two decades the main focus of research into first-order (FO) model checking algorithms have been sparse relational structures-culminating in the FPT-algorithm by Grohe, Kreutzer and Siebertz for FO model checking of nowhere dense classes of graphs [STOC'14], with dense structures starting to attract attention only recently. Bova, Ganian and Szeider [CSL-LICS'14] initiated the study of the complexity of FO model checking on partially ordered sets (posets). Bova, Ganian and Szeider showed that model checking existential FO logic is fixed-parameter tractable (FPT) on posets of bounded width, where the width of a poset is the size of the largest antichain in the poset. The existence of an FPT algorithm for general FO model checking on posets of bounded width, however, remained open. We resolve this question in the positive by giving an algorithm that takes as its input an n-element poset P of width w and an FO logic formula φ, and determines whether φ holds on P in time f(φ, w) · n2.

Let $G$ be a graph embedded in an orientable surface $\Sigma$, possibly with edge weights, and denote by ${\rm len}(\gamma)$ the length (the number of edges or the sum of the edge weights) of a cycle $\gamma$ in $G$. The stretch of a graph embedded on a surface is the minimum of ${\rm len}(\alpha)\cdot {\rm len}(\beta)$ over all pairs of cycles $\alpha$ and $\beta$ that cross exactly once. We provide two algorithms to compute the stretch of an embedded graph, each based on a different principle. The first algorithm is based on surgery and computes the stretch in time $O(g^4 n \log n)$ with high probability, or in time $O(g^4 n \log^2 n)$ in the worst case, where $g$ is the genus of the surface $\Sigma$ and $n$ is the number of vertices in $G$. The second algorithm is based on using a short homology basis and computes the stretch in time $O(n^2\log n + n^2g + ng^3)$.

We provide a parameterized algorithm for the propositional model counting problem #SAT, the runtime of which has a single-exponential dependency on the rank-width of the signed graph of a formula. That is, our algorithm runs in time $\cal{O}(t^3 \cdo

We prove, in the universe of trees of bounded height, that for any MSO formula with $m$ variables there exists a set of kernels such that the size of each of these kernels can be bounded by an elementary function of m. This yields a faster MSO model checking algorithm for trees of bounded height than the one for general trees. From that we obtain, by means of interpretation, corresponding results for the classes of graphs of bounded tree-depth (MSO_2) and shrub-depth (MSO_1), and thus we give wide generalizations of Lampis' (ESA 2010) and Ganian's (IPEC 2011) results. In the second part of the paper we use this kernel structure to show that FO has the same expressive power as MSO_1 on the graph classes of bounded shrub-depth. This makes bounded shrub-depth a good candidate for characterization of the hereditary classes of graphs on which FO and MSO_1 coincide, a problem recently posed by Elberfeld, Grohe, and Tantau (LICS 2012).

One of the most important algorithmic meta-theorems is a famous result by Courcelle, which states that any graph problem definable in monadic second-order logic with edge-set quantifications (MSO2) is decidable in linear time on any class of graphs of bounded tree-width. In the parlance of parameterized complexity, this means that MSO2 model-checking is fixed-parameter tractable with respect to the tree-width as parameter. Recently, Kreutzer and Tazari proved a corresponding complexity lower-bound---that MSO2 model-checking is not even in XP wrt the formula size as parameter for graph classes that are subgraph-closed and whose tree-width is poly-logarithmically unbounded. Of course, this is not an unconditional result but holds modulo a certain complexity-theoretic assumption, namely, the Exponential Time Hypothesis (ETH). In this paper we present a closely related result. We show that even MSO1 model-checking with a fixed set of vertex labels, but without edge-set quantifications, is not in XP wrt the formula size as parameter for graph classes which are subgraph-closed and whose tree-width is poly-logarithmically unbounded unless the non-uniform ETH fails. In comparison to Kreutzer and Tazari, (1) we use a stronger prerequisite, namely non-uniform instead of uniform ETH, to avoid the effectiveness assumption and the construction of certain obstructions used in their proofs; and (2) we assume a different set of problems to be efficiently decidable, namely MSO1-definable properties on vertex labeled graphs instead of MSO2-definable properties on unlabeled graphs. Our result has an interesting consequence in the realm of digraph width measures: Strengthening a recent result, we show that no subdigraph-monotone measure can be algorithmically useful, unless it is within a poly-logarithmic factor of (undirected) tree-width.

In recent years, the parameterized complexity approach has lead to the introduction of many new algorithms and frameworks on graphs and digraphs of bounded clique-width and, equivalently, rank-width. However, despite intensive work on the subject, there still exist well-established hard problems where neither a parameterized algorithm nor a theoretical obstacle to its existence are known. Our article is interested mainly in the digraph case, targeting the well-known Minimum Leaf Out-Branching (cf. also Minimum Leaf Spanning Tree) and Edge Disjoint Paths problems on digraphs of bounded clique-width with non-standard new approaches. The first part of the article deals with the Minimum Leaf Out-Branching problem and introduces a novel XP-time algorithm wrt. clique-width. We remark that this problem is known to be W[2]-hard, and that our algorithm does not resemble any of the previously published attempts solving special cases of it such as the Hamiltonian Path. The second part then looks at the Edge Disjoint Paths problem (both on graphs and digraphs) from a different perspective -- rather surprisingly showing that this problem has a definition in the MSO_1 logic of graphs. The linear-time FPT algorithm wrt. clique-width then follows as a direct consequence.

We provide a parameterized polynomial algorithm for the propositional model counting problem #SAT, the runtime of which is single-exponential in the rank-width of a formula. Previously, analogous algorithms have been known --e.g. [Fischer, Makowsky, and Ravve]-- with a single-exponential dependency on the clique-width of a formula. Our algorithm thus presents an exponential runtime improvement (since clique-width reaches up to exponentially higher values than rank-width), and can be of practical interest for small values of rank-width. We also provide an algorithm for the MAX-SAT problem along the same lines.

The crossing number of a graph is the least number of pairwise edge crossings in a drawing of the graph in the plane. We provide an O(n log n) time constant factor approximation algorithm for the crossing number of a graph of bounded maximum degree which is “densely enough” embeddable in an arbitrary fixed orientable surface. Our approach combines some known tools with a powerful new lower bound on the crossing number of an embedded graph. This result extends previous results that gave such approximations in particular cases of projective, toroidal or apex graphs; it is a qualitative improvement over previously published algorithms that constructed low-crossing-number drawings of embeddable graphs without giving any approximation guarantees. No constant factor approximation algorithms for the crossing number problem over comparably rich classes of graphs are known to date.

Besides the successful concept of tree-width (see [H. Bodlaender, A. Koster: Combinatorial optimisation on graphs of bounded treewidth, ***** * this survey volume ******, 14 p.]) in the past years, many concepts and parameters measuring a similarity of structures to trees, or how a structure distinguishes from a tree, have been born and studied. These concepts and parameters proved to be useful tools for many applications, especially in the design of efficient algorithms. We present a novel view of contemporary developments of these “width” parameters in combinatorial structures that, besides traditional tree-width and derived dynamic programming schemes, leads to other usable parameters like branch-width,

We present a new algorithm that can output the rank-decomposition of width at most k of a graph if such exists. For that we use an algorithm that, for an input matroid represented over a fixed finite field, outputs its branch-decomposition of width at most k if such exists. This algorithm works also for partitioned matroids. Both of these algorithms are fixed-parameter tractable, that is, they run in time $O(n^3)$ where n is the number of vertices / elements of the input, for each constant value of k and any fixed finite field. The previous best algorithm for construction of a branch-decomposition or a rank-decomposition of optimal width due to Oum and Seymour [J. Combin. Theory Ser. B, 97 (2007), pp. 385–393] is not fixed-parameter tractable.

The Tutte polynomial is a notoriously hard graph invariant, and efficient algorithms for it are known only for a few special graph classes, like for those of bounded tree‐width. The notion of clique‐width extends the definition of cographs (graphs without induced $P_4$), and it is a more general notion than that of tree‐width. We show a subexponential algorithm (running in time $\exp{O(n^{1-\varepsilon})}\,$) for computing the Tutte polynomial on graphs of bounded clique‐width. In fact, our algorithm computes the more general U‐polynomial.

Branch-width is a structural parameter very closely related to tree-width, but branch-width has an immediate generalization from graphs to matroids. We present an algorithm that, for a given matroid M of bounded branch-width t which is represented over a finite field, finds a branch decomposition of M of width at most 3t in cubic time. Then we show that the branch-width of M is a uniformly fixed-parameter tractable problem. Other applications include recognition of matroid properties definable in the monadic second-order logic for bounded branch-width, and [S.-I. Oum, Approximating rank-width and clique-width quickly, in Proceedings of the 31st International Workshop on Graph-Theoretic Concepts in Computer Science, Springer-Verlag, Heidelberg, to appear] a cubic time approximation algorithm for graph rank-width and clique-width. (A correction to this article has been appended to the pdf file.)

Let (X 1 ,X 2 ) be an exact k-separation of a matroid N. If M is a matroid that contains N as a minor and the k-separation (X 1 ,X 2 ) does not extend to a k-separation in M, then we say that Mbridges the k-separation (X 1 ,X 2 ) in N. One would hope that a minor minimal bridge for (X 1 ,X 2 ) would not be much larger than N. Unfortunately there are instances in which one can construct arbitrarily large minor-minimal bridges. We restrict our attention to the class of matroids representable over a fixed finite field and show that here minor-minimal bridges are bounded in size.