Abstract

Constructing a visually informative drawing of an abstract graph is a problem of considerable practical importance, and has recently been the focus of much investigation. Displaying symmetry has emerged as one of the foremost criteria for achieving good drawings. Linear-time algorithms are already known for the detection and display of symmetry in trees, outerplanar graphs, and embedded planar graphs. The central results of this paper show that for general graphs, however, detecting the presence of even a single axial or rotational symmetry is NP-complete. A number of related results are also established, including the #P-completeness of counting the axial or rotational symmetries of a graph.

Department(s)

Computer Science

Comments

This paper was presented at the First Great Lakes Computer Science Conference, held at the University of Western Michigan, October 1989. The paper has been submitted for publication in the conference Proceedings, which will appear in the Lecture Notes in Computer Science series by Springer-Verlag.

Report Number

CSc-90-1

Document Type

Technical Report

Document Version

Final Version

File Type

text

Language(s)

English

Rights

© 1990 University of Missouri--Rolla, All rights reserved.

Publication Date

22 Jan 1990

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