2023/01/23 by Gronemann, Martin, Nöllenburg, Martin, Villedieu, Anaïs
#Computational Geometry (cs.CG) #FOS: Computer and information sciences
paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2301.09440
Vertex splitting replaces a vertex by two copies and partitions its incident edges amongst the copies. This problem has been studied as a graph editing operation to achieve desired properties with as few splits as possible, most often planarity, for which the problem is NP-hard. Here we study how to minimize the number of splits to turn a plane graph into an outerplane one. We tackle this problem by establishing a direct connection between splitting a plane graph to outerplanarity, finding a connected face cover, and finding a feedback vertex set in its dual. We prove NP-completeness for plane biconnected graphs, while we show that a polynomial-time algorithm exists for maximal planar graphs. Finally, we provide upper and lower bounds for certain families of maximal planar graphs.