Planar graphs:

A planar graph is a graph that can be embedded (drawn) in the plane such that no edges cross.  Kuratowski's famous theorem regarding planar graphs states that a graph is planar if and only if it contains neither K5 nor K3,3 as a minor.  That is, G cannot be transformed into K5 or K3,3 by a series of edge contractions, edge deletions, and vertex deletions.  With a little intuition regarding topological transformations in the plane, we can see that any planar graph can be embedded in any point set.

Consider an embedding of a planar graph.  A face of the graph is a region bounded by a set of edges and vertices in the embedding.  Note that in any embedding of a graph in the plane, the faces are the same in terms of the graph, though they may be different regions in the plane. The face with unbounded area is known as the unbounded face, the outer face, or the infinite face.

Relating the number of faces (F), edges (F), vertices (V), and components (C) in a planar graph, Euler's formula states that V-E+F=C+1.  Noting that every edge borders exactly two faces, we can be assured that the number of edges in a planar graph is linear in the number of vertices.

These graphs are planar:


But these graphs are not:


Planar graphs are all well and good, but we wish to consider the problem of straight-line embeddings in a given point set.  Consider, for example, K4 in the two point sets shown.  Although K4 is planar, it cannot be embedded in the second point set if we demand that the edges be straight lines.  What, then, is the largest class of graphs that can be straight-line embedded in any point set?  Gritzmann et al. showed that it is exactly the class of outer-planar graphs [GMPP91].  Castañeda and Urrutia showed the same independently in 1996 [CU96].


Outer-planar graphs:

Outer-planar graphs are a sub-class of planar graphs with one simple restriction: the graph must have a planar embedding in which every vertex lies on a single face.  A theorem for planar graphs tells us that this is equivalent to the restriction that the graph must have a planar embedding in which every vertex lies on the unbounded face.  Henceforth we will assume that an embedding of an outer-planar graph has all vertices on the unbounded face.

These graphs are outer-planar:


But these graphs are not (although they are all planar):


Just as planar graphs have a graph minor characterization as seen in Kuratowski's theorem, a beautiful analogue can be found for outer-planar graphs:  A graph is outer-planar if and only if it contains neither K4 nor K2,3 as a minor.


Strong and weak duals:

The dual G' of a planar graph is a graph defined as follows:  Each face in G is a vertex in G', and two vertices in G' are adjacent if and only if the faces share an edge in G.  The weak dual G* of G is obtained from the dual G' by removing the vertex corresponding to the unbounded face in G.  It is easy to see that the dual of an outer-planar graph is a tree, since a cycle in G* would represent a set of bounded faces in G that separate a vertex v from the unbounded face.  Furthermore, we can also see that the degree of a vertex in G* is at most the size of the corresponding face in G.