Abstract. We investigate the s-t-connectivity problem for directed planar graphs, which is hard for L and is contained in NL but is not known to be complete. We show that this problem is logspace-reducible to its complement, and we show that the problem of searching graphs of genus 1 reduces to the planar case. We also consider a previously-studied subclass of planar graphs known as grid graphs. We show that the directed planar s-t-connectivity problem reduces to the reachability problem for directed grid graphs. A special case of the grid-graph reachability problem where no edges are directed from right to left is known as the “acyclic grid graph reachability problem”. We show that this problem lies in the complexity class UL. 1

We show that the st-connectivity problem for directed planar graphs can be decided in unambiguous logarithmic space. 1.

Abstract. We revisit monotone planar circuits MPCVP, with special attention to circuits with cylindrical embeddings. MPCVP is known to be in NC 3 in general, and in LogDCFL for the special case of upward stratified circuits. 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 monotone circuits with embeddings that are stratified cylindrical, cylindrical, planar one-input-face and focused can be evaluated in LogDCFL, AC 1 (LogDCFL), LogCFL and AC 1 (LogDCFL) respectively. We note that the NC 3 algorithm for general MPCVP is in AC 1 (LogCFL) =SAC 2.Finally, we show that monotone circuits with toroidal embeddings can, given such an embedding, be evaluated in NC. 1

It has been known for a long time now that the problem of counting the number of perfect matchings in a planar graph is in NC. This result is based on the notion of a pfaffian orientation of a graph. (Recently, Galluccio and Loebl [7] gave a P-time algorithm for the case of graphs of small genus.) However, it is not known if the corresponding search problem, that of finding one perfect matching in a planar graph, is in NC. This situation is intriguing as it seems to contradict our intuition that search should be easier than counting. For the case of planar bipartite graphs, Miller and Naor [22] showed that a perfect matching can indeed be found using an NC algorithm. We present a very different NC-algorithm for this problem. Unlike the Miller...

The subclass of directed series-parallel graphs plays an important role in computer science. To determine whether a graph is series-parallel is a well studied problem in algorithmic graph theory. Fast sequential and parallel algorithms for this problem have been developed in a sequence of papers. For series-parallel graphs methods are also known to solve the reachability and the decomposition problem time efficiently. However, no dedicated results have been obtained for the space complexity of these problems -- the topic of this paper. For this special class of graphs, we develop deterministic algorithms for the recognition, reachability, decomposition and the path counting problem that use only logarithmic space. Since for arbitrary directed graphs reachability and path counting are believed not to be solvable in log-space the main contribution of this work are novel deterministic path finding routines that work correctly in series-parallel graphs, and a characterization...

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.

The isomorphism problem for planar graphs is known to be efficiently solvable. For planar 3-connected graphs, the isomorphism problem can be solved by efficient parallel algorithms, it is in the class AC¹. In this paper we improve the upper bound for planar 3-connected graphs to unambiguous logspace, in fact to UL ∩ coUL. As a consequence of our method we get that the isomorphism problem for oriented graphs is in NL. We also show that the problems are hard for L.

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

The subclass of directed series-parallel graphs plays an important role in computer science. Whether a given graph is series-parallel is a well studied problem in algorithmic graph theory, for which fast sequential and parallel algorithms have been developed in a sequence of papers. Also methods are known to solve the reachability and the decomposition problem for series-parallel graphs time efficiently. However, no dedicated results have been obtained for the space complexity of these problems when restricted to series-parallel graphs – the topic of this paper. Deterministic algorithms are presented for the recognition, reachability, decomposition and the path counting problem for series-parallel graphs that use only logarithmic space. Since for arbitrary directed graphs reachability and path counting are believed not to be solvable in Logspace the main contribution of this work are novel deterministic path finding routines that work correctly in series-parallel graphs, and a characterization of series-parallel graphs by forbidden subgraphs that can be tested space-efficiently. The space bounds are best possible, i.e. the decision problem is shown to be £-complete with respect to AC^0-reductions. They have also implications for the parallel time complexity of these problems when restricted to series-parallel graphs. Finally, we sketch how these results can be generalised to extension of the seriesparallel graph family: to graphs with multiple sources or multiple sinks and to the class of minimal vertex series-parallel graphs.

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.