Shortest Path Separators in Unit Disk Graphs

Abstract

We introduce a new balanced separator theorem for unit-disk graphs involving two shortest paths combined with the 1-hop neighbours of those paths and two other vertices. This answers an open problem of Yan, Xiang and Dragan [CGTA '12] and improves their result that requires removing the 3-hop neighborhood of two shortest paths. Our proof uses very different ideas, including Delaunay triangulations and a generalization of the celebrated balanced separator theorem of Lipton and Tarjan [J. Appl. Math. '79] to systems of non-intersecting paths.