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DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.GD.2025.24

String Graph Obstacles of High Girth and of Bounded Degree

Authors: Maria Chudnovsky, David Eppstein, and David Fischer

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 357, 33rd International Symposium on Graph Drawing and Network Visualization (GD 2025)

Abstract

A string graph is the intersection graph of curves in the plane. Kratochvíl previously showed the existence of infinitely many obstacles: graphs that are not string graphs but for which any edge contraction or vertex deletion produces a string graph. Kratochvíl’s obstacles contain arbitrarily large cliques, so they have girth three and unbounded degree. We extend this line of working by studying obstacles among graphs of restricted girth and/or degree. We construct an infinite family of obstacles of girth four; in addition, our construction is K_{2,3}-subgraph-free and near-planar (planar plus one edge). Furthermore, we prove that there is a subcubic obstacle of girth three, and that there are no subcubic obstacles of high girth. We characterize the subcubic string graphs as having a matching whose contraction yields a planar graph, and based on this characterization we find a linear-time algorithm for recognizing subcubic string graphs of bounded treewidth.

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Maria Chudnovsky, David Eppstein, and David Fischer. String Graph Obstacles of High Girth and of Bounded Degree. In 33rd International Symposium on Graph Drawing and Network Visualization (GD 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 357, pp. 24:1-24:18, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@InProceedings{chudnovsky_et_al:LIPIcs.GD.2025.24,
  author =	{Chudnovsky, Maria and Eppstein, David and Fischer, David},
  title =	{{String Graph Obstacles of High Girth and of Bounded Degree}},
  booktitle =	{33rd International Symposium on Graph Drawing and Network Visualization (GD 2025)},
  pages =	{24:1--24:18},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-403-1},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{357},
  editor =	{Dujmovi\'{c}, Vida and Montecchiani, Fabrizio},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.GD.2025.24},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-250108},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.GD.2025.24},
  annote =	{Keywords: string graphs, induced minors, forbidden minors, sparsity, triangle-free graphs, near-planar graphs}
}

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String Graph Obstacles of High Girth and of Bounded Degree

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