A monotone planar circuit (MPC) is a Boolean circuit that can be embedded in a plane, and that has only AND and OR gates. Yang showed that the one-input-face monotone planar circuit value problem (MPCVP) is in NC 2, and Limaye et. al. improved the bound to LogCFL. Barrington et. al. showed that evaluating monotone upward stratified circuits, a restricted version of the oneinput-face MPCVP, is in LogDCFL. In this paper, we prove that the unrestricted one-input-face MPCVP is also in LogDCFL. We also show this problem to be L-hard under quantifier free projections.

We study the complexity of restricted versions of s-t-connectivity, which is the standard complete problem for NL. In particular, we focus on different classes of planar graphs, of which grid graphs are an important special case. Our main results are: • Reachability in graphs of genus one is logspace-equivalent to reachability in grid graphs (and in particular it is logspace-equivalent to both reachability and non-reachability in planar graphs). • Many of the natural restrictions on grid-graph reachability (GGR) are equivalent under AC 0 reductions (for instance, undirected GGR, outdegree-one GGR, and indegree-one-outdegree-one GGR are all equivalent). These problems are all equivalent to the problem of determining whether a completed game position in HEX is a winning position, as well as to the problem of reachability in mazes studied by Blum and Kozen [BK78]. These problems provide natural examples of problems that are hard for NC 1 under AC 0 reductions but are not known to be hard for L; they thus give insight into the structure of L. • Reachability in layered planar graphs is logspace-equivalent to layered grid graph reachability (LGGR). We show that LGGR lies in UL (a subclass of NL). • Series-Parallel digraphs (on which reachability was shown to be decidable in logspace by Jakoby et al.) are a special case of single-source-single-sink planar directed acyclic graphs (DAGs); reachability for such graphs logspace reduces to single-source-single-sink acyclic grid graphs. We show that reachability on such grid graphs AC 0 reduces to undirected GGR. • We build on this to show that reachability for single-source multiple-sink planar DAGs is solvable in L. 1

We consider planar upward drawings of directed graphs on arbitrary surfaces where the upward direction is defined by a vector field. This generalizes earlier approaches using surfaces with a fixed embedding in R 3 and introduces new classes of planar upward drawable graphs, where some of them even allow cycles. Our approach leads to a classification of planar upward embeddability. In particular, we show the coincidence of the classes of planar upward drawable graphs on the sphere and on the standing cylinder. These classes coincide with the classes of planar upward drawable graphs with a homogeneous field on a cylinder and with a radial field in the plane. A cyclic field in the plane introduces the new class RUP of upward drawable graphs, which can be embedded on a rolling cylinder. We establish strict inclusions for planar upward drawability on the plane, the sphere, the rolling cylinder, and the torus, even for acyclic graphs. Finally, upward drawability remains NP-hard for the standing cylinder and the torus; for the cylinder this was left as an open problem by Limaye et al.

Abstract. We consider directed planar graphs with an upward planar drawing on the rolling and standing cylinders. These classes extend the upward planar graphs in the plane. Here, we address the dual graphs. Our main result is a combinatorial characterization of these sets of upward planar graphs. It basically shows that the roles of the standing and the rolling cylinders are interchanged for their duals. 1

and for the special case of upward stratified circuits, it is known to be in LogDCFL. In this paper we re-examine the complexity of MPCVP, with special attention to circuits with cylindrical embeddings. We characterize cylindricality, which is stronger than planarity but strictly generalizes upward planarity, and make the characterization partially constructive. We use this construction, and four key reduction lemmas, to obtain several improvements. We show that stratified cylindrical monotone circuits can be evaluated in LogDCFL, and arbitrary cylindrical monotone circuits can be evaluated in AC 1 (LogDCFL), while monotone circuits with one-input-face planar embeddings can be evaluated in LogCFL. For monotone circuits with focused embeddings, we show an upper bound of AC 1 (LogDCFL). We re-examine the NC 3 algorithm for general MPCVP, and note that it is in AC 1 (LogCFL) = SAC 2. Finally, we consider extensions beyond MPCVP. We show that monotone circuits with toroidal embeddings can, given such an embedding, be evaluated in NC. Also, special kinds of arbitrary genus circuits can also be evaluated in NC. We also show that planar non-monotone circuits with polylogarithmic negation-height can be evaluated in NC.

In this thesis, we deal largely with complexity theoretic aspects in planar restrictions and obliviousness. Our main motivation was to identify problems for which the planar restriction is much easier, computationally, than the unrestricted version. First, we study constant width polynomial-sized circuits of low (polylogarithmic) genus; we show how such circuits characterize exactly the well-known circuit complexity class ACC0 (given that the unrestricted version captures the whole of NC1). We also give a new circuit characterization of the class NC1. Shifting our focus from circuits to graphs, we look at different notions of connectivity. We investigate the directed planar graph reachability problem, as a possibly more tractable special case of the arbitrary graph reachability problem (which is NL-complete). We prove that this problem logspace-reduces to its complement, and also that reachability questions on genus 1 graphs reduce to that in planar graphs. We also prove that reachability in a particularly simple class of planar graphs (namely, grid graphs) is no easier than the general directed planar reachability question. We then proceed to isolate to several large classes of planar graphs for which the reachability questions are solvable in deterministic logspace. Counting the number of spanning trees in a graph is a useful extension of the task of determining

Abstract. We consider directed planar graphs with an upward planar drawing on the rolling and standing cylinders. These classes extend the upward planar graphs in the plane. Here, we address the dual graphs. Our main result is a combinatorial characterization of these sets of upward planar graphs. It basically shows that the roles of the standing and the rolling cylinders are interchanged for their duals. 1