Fast generation of planar graphs (expanded version) Gunnar Brinkmann∗ Brendan D. McKay† Department of Applied Mathematics Department of Computer Science and Computer Science Australian National University Ghent University Canberra ACT 0200, Australia B-9000 Ghent, Belgium
[email protected] [email protected] Abstract The program plantri is the fastest isomorph-free generator of many classes of planar graphs, including triangulations, quadrangulations, and convex polytopes. Many applications in the natural sciences as well as in mathematics have appeared. This paper describes plantri’s principles of operation, the basis for its efficiency, and the recursive algorithms behind many of its capabilities. In addition, we give many counts of isomorphism classes of planar graphs compiled using plantri. These include triangulations, quadrangulations, convex polytopes, several classes of cubic and quartic graphs, and triangulations of disks. This paper is an expanded version of the paper “Fast generation of planar graphs” to appeared in MATCH. The difference is that this version has substantially more tables. 1 Introduction The program plantri can rapidly generate many classes of graphs embedded in the plane. Since it was first made available, plantri has been used as a tool for research of many types. We give only a partial list, beginning with masters theses [37, 40] and PhD theses [32, 42]. Applications have appeared in chemistry [8, 21, 28, 39, 44], in crystallography [19], in physics [25], and in various areas of mathematics [1, 2, 7, 20, 22, 24, 41]. ∗Research supported in part by the Australian National University. †Research supported by the Australian Research Council. 1 The purpose of this paper is to describe the facilities of plantri and to explain in general terms the method of operation.