A drawing of a graph G is a mapping which assigns to each vertex a point of the plane and to each edge a simple continuous arc connecting the corresponding two points. The crossing number of G is the minimum number of crossing points in any drawing of G. We define two new parameters, as follows. The pairwise crossing number (resp. the odd-crossing number) of G is the minimum number of pairs of edges that cross (resp. cross an odd number of times) over all drawings of G. We prove that the largest of these numbers (the crossing number) cannot exceed twice the square of the smallest (the odd-crossing number). Our proof is based on the following generalization of an old result of Hanani, which is of independent interest. Let G be a graph and let E0 be a subset of its edges such that there is a drawing of G, in which every edge belonging to E0 crosses any other edge an even number of times. Then G can be redrawn so that the elements of E0 are not involved in any crossing. Finally, we show that the determination of each of these parameters is an NP-hard problem and it is NP-complete in the case of the crossing number and the odd-crossing number. 1

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Scheinerman and Wilf [SW94] assert that "an important open problem in the study of graph embeddings is to determine the rectilinear crossing number of the complete graph Kn ." A rectilinear embedding or drawing of Kn is an arrangement of n vertices in the plane, every pair of which is connected by an edge that is a line segment. We assume that no three vertices are collinear. The rectilinear crossing number of Kn is the fewest number of edge crossings attainable over all planar rectilinear embeddings of Kn . For each n we construct a rectilinear embedding of Kn that has the fewest number of edge crossings and the best asymptotics known to date. Moreover, we give some alternative infinite families of embeddings of Kn with good asymptotics. Finally, we mention some old and new open problems.

This paper introduces genetic algorithms for the level permutation problem (LPP). The problem is to minimize the number of edge crossings in a bipartite graph when the order of vertices in one of the two vertex subsets is fixed. We show that genetic algorithms outperform the previously known heuristics especially when applied to low density graphs. Values for various parameters of genetic LPP algorithms are tested.

The rectilinear crossing number of a graph G is the minimum number of edge crossings that can occur in any drawing of G in which the edges are straight line segments and no three vertices are collinear. This number has been known for G = K n if n # 9. Using a combinatorial argument we show that for n =10the number is 62.

We give a survey of techniques for deriving lower bounds and algorithms for constructing upper bounds for several variations of the crossing number problem. Our aim is to emphasize the more general results or those results which have an algorithmic flavor, including the recent results of the authors. We also show applications of crossing numbers to other areas of discrete mathematics, like discrete geometry.

Foundation (JU204/10-1). Abstract. We consider the following problem known as simultaneous geometric graph embedding (SGE). Given a set of planar graphs on a shared vertex set, decide whether the vertices can be placed in the plane in such a way that for each graph the straight-line drawing is planar. We partially settle an open problem of Erten and Kobourov [5] by showing that even for two graphs the problem is NP-hard. We also show that the problem of computing the rectilinear crossing number of a graph can be reduced to a simultaneous geometric graph embedding problem; this implies that placing SGE in NP will be hard, since the corresponding question for rectilinear crossing number is a longstanding open problem. However, rather like rectilinear crossing number, SGE can be decided in PSPACE. 1

The crossing number of a graph G is the minimum number of crossings in a drawing of G. We introduce several variants of this definition, and present a list of related open problems. The first item is Zarankiewicz's classical conjecture about crossing numbers of complete bipartite graphs, the last ones are new and less carefully tested. In Section 5, we state some conjectures about the expected values of various crossing numbers of random graphs, and prove a large deviation result.

In this paper we present a branch-and-bound algorithm for finding the minimum crossing number of a graph. We begin with the vertex set and add edges by selecting every legal option for creating a crossing or not. After each edge is added we determine if the resulting partial graph is planar. We continue adding edges until either all edges have been added or we reach a point where the graph cannot be completed as started. At this point we backtrack to see if the graph can be drawn with fewer crossings by selecting other options when adding edges. keywords: Crossing Number, Algorithm 1 Introduction Determining the crossing number of a graph is an important problem with applications in areas such as circuit design and network configuration [17]. It is this importance that has driven our work in finding the minimum crossing number of a graph. Informally, the crossing number of a graph G, denoted (G), is the minimum number of crossings among all good drawings of G in the plane, where a g...

Scheinerman and Wilf [SW94] assert that "an important open problem in the study of graph embeddings is to determine the rectilinear crossing number of the complete graph Kn ." A rectilinear embedding or drawing of Kn is an arrangement of n vertices in the plane, every pair of which is connected by an edge that is a line segment. We assume that no three vertices are collinear. The rectilinear crossing number of Kn is the fewest number of edge crossings attainable over all planar rectilinear embeddings of Kn . For each n we construct a rectilinear embedding of Kn that has the fewest number of edge crossings and the best asymptotics known to date. Moreover, we give some alternative infinite families of embeddings of Kn with good asymptotics. Finally, we mention some old and new open problems. 1 Introduction and History Given an arbitrary graph G, determining an embedding of G in the plane that produces the fewest number of edge crossings is NP-Complete [GJ83]. The same can be said for a...