Which Crossing Number Is It Anyway?

A drawing of a graph G is a mapping which assigns to each vertex a point of the plane and to each edge a simple continuous arc connecting the corresponding two points. The crossing number of G is the minimum number of crossing points in any drawing of G. We define two new parameters, as follows. The pairwise crossing number (resp. the odd-crossing number) of G is the minimum number of pairs of edges that cross (resp. cross an odd number of times) over all drawings of G. We prove that the largest of these numbers (the crossing number) cannot exceed, twice the square of the smallest (the odd-crossing number). Our proof is based on the following generalization of an old result of Hanani, which is of independent interest. Let G be a graph and let E0 be a subset of its edges such that there is a drawing of G, in which every edge belonging to E0 crosses any other edge an even number of times. Then g can be redrawn so that the elements of E0 are not involved in any crossing. Finally, we show that the determination of each of these parameters is an NP-hard problem and it is NP-complete in the case of the crossing number and the odd-crossing number.

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