New Distributed Interactive Proofs for Planarity: A Matter of Left and Right

TL;DR

This paper introduces new distributed interactive proofs for planarity that significantly reduce proof size, improving efficiency in verifying graph properties in distributed networks.

Contribution

The authors develop distributed interactive proofs with exponentially shorter proofs for planarity and related graph families, advancing the state-of-the-art in proof size reduction.

Findings

Achieved exponentially shorter proof sizes for planarity verification.

Extended techniques to related graph classes like outerplanarity and treewidth-bounded graphs.

Demonstrated improved efficiency over previous protocols in distributed property testing.

Abstract

We provide new distributed interactive proofs (DIP) for planarity and related graph families. The notion of a \emph{distributed interactive proof} (DIP) was introduced by Kol, Oshman, and Saxena (PODC 2018). In this setting, the verifier consists of $n$ nodes connected by a communication graph $G$. The prover is a single entity that communicates with all nodes by short messages. The goal is to verify that the graph $G$ satisfies a certain property (e.g., planarity) in a small number of rounds, and with a small communication bound, denoted as the \emph{proof size}. Prior work by Naor, Parter and Yogev (SODA 2020) presented a DIP for planarity that uses three interaction rounds and a proof size of $O(\log n)$. Feuilloley et al.\ (PODC 2020) showed that the same can be achieved with a single interaction round and without randomization, by providing a proof labeling scheme with a proof size of $O(\log n)$. In a subsequent work, Bousquet, Feuilloley, and Pierron (OPODIS 2021) achieved the same bound for related graph families such as outerplanarity, series-parallel graphs, and graphs of treewidth at most $2$. In this work, we design new DIPs that use exponentially shorter proofs compared to the state-of-the-art bounds.