On computing the vertex connectivity of 1-plane graphs

A graph is called 1-plane if it has an embedding in the plane where each edge is crossed at most once by another edge. A crossing of a 1-plane graph is called an $\times$-crossing if the endpoints of the crossing pair of edges induce a matching. In this paper, we show how to compute the vertex connectivity of a 1-plane graph $G$ without $\times$-crossings in linear time. To do so, we show that for any two vertices $u,v$ in a minimum separating set $S$, the distance between $u$ and $v$ in an auxiliary graph $\Lambda(G)$ (obtained by planarizing $G$ and then inserting into each face a new vertex adjacent to all vertices of the face) is small. It hence suffices to search for a minimum separating set in various subgraphs $\Lambda_i$ of $\Lambda(G)$ with small diameter. Since $\Lambda(G)$ is planar, the subgraphs $\Lambda_i$ have small treewidth. Each minimum separating set $S$ then gives rise to a partition of $\Lambda_i$ into three vertex sets with special properties; such a partition can be found via Courcelle's theorem in linear time.