Planarity Testing Revisited

Abstract

Planarity Testing is the problem of determining whether a given graph is planar while planar embedding is the corresponding construction problem. The bounded space complexity of these problems has been determined to be exactly Logspace by Allender and Mahajan with the aid of Reingold's result. Unfortunately, the algorithm is quite daunting and generalizing it to say, the bounded genus case seems a tall order. In this work, we present a simple planar embedding algorithm running in logspace. We hope this algorithm will be more amenable to generalization. The algorithm is based on the fact that 3-connected planar graphs have a unique embedding, a variant of Tutte's criterion on conflict graphs of cycles and an explicit change of cycle basis.% for planar graphs. We also present a logspace algorithm to find obstacles to planarity, viz. a Kuratowski minor, if the graph is non-planar. To the best of our knowledge this is the first logspace algorithm for this problem.