Structure of $k$-Matching-Planar Graphs

Abstract

For $k \geqslant 0$, we define a simple topological graph $G$ (that is, a graph drawn in the plane such that every pair of edges intersect at most once, including endpoints) to be $k$-matching-planar if for every edge $e \in E(G)$, every matching amongst the edges of $G$ that cross $e$ has size at most $k$. The class of $k$-matching-planar graphs is a significant generalisation of many other existing beyond planar graph classes, including $k$-planar graphs. We prove that every simple topological $k$-matching-planar graph is isomorphic to a subgraph of the strong product of a graph with bounded treewidth and a path. This result qualitatively extends the planar graph product structure theorem of Dujmovi\'c, Joret, Micek, Morin, Ueckerdt, and Wood [J. ACM 2020] and recent product structure theorems for other beyond planar graph classes. Using this result, we deduce that the class of simple topological $k$-matching-planar graphs has several attractive properties, making it the broadest class of simple beyond planar graphs in the literature that has these properties. All of our results about simple topological $k$-matching-planar graphs generalise to the non-simple setting, where the maximum number of pairwise crossing edges incident to a common vertex becomes relevant. The paper introduces several tools and results of independent interest. We show that every simple topological $k$-matching-planar graph admits an edge-colouring with $\mathcal{O}(k^{3}\log k)$ colours such that monochromatic edges do not cross. As a key ingredient of the proof of our main product structure theorem, we introduce the concept of weak shallow minors, which subsume and generalise shallow minors, a key concept in graph sparsity theory. We also establish upper bounds on the treewidth of graphs with well-behaved circular drawings that qualitatively generalise several existing results.