Outerplanar Crossing Numbers, the Circular Arrangement Problem and Isoperimetric Functions

Abstract

We extend a lower bound due to Shahrokhi, Sýkora, Székely and Vrťo for the outerplanar crossing number (in other terminologies also called convex, circular and one-page book crossing number) to a more general setting. In this setting we can show a better lower bound for the outerplanar crossing number of hypercubes than the best lower bound for the planar crossing number. We exhibit further sequences of graphs, whose outerplanar crossing number exceeds by a factor of $\log n$ the planar crossing number of the graph. We study the circular arrangement problem, as a lower bound for the linear arrangement problem, in a general fashion. We obtain new lower bounds for the circular arrangement problem. All the results depend on establishing good isoperimetric functions for certain classes of graphs. For several graph families new near-tight isoperimetric functions are established.