The Graphs of Planar Soap Bubbles

Abstract

We characterize the graphs formed by two-dimensional soap bubbles as being exactly the 3-regular bridgeless planar multigraphs. Our characterization combines a local characterization of soap bubble graphs in terms of the curvatures of arcs meeting at common vertices, a proof that this characterization remains invariant under Moebius transformations, an application of Moebius invariance to prove bridgelessness, and a Moebius-invariant power diagram of circles previously developed by the author for its applications in graph drawing.