Structural Parameterizations of $k$-Planarity

Abstract: The concept of $k$-planarity is extensively studied in the context of Beyond Planarity. A graph is $k$-planar if it admits a drawing in the plane in which each edge is crossed at most $k$ times. The local crossing number of a graph is the minimum integer $k$ such that it is $k$-planar. The problem of determining whether an input graph is $1$-planar is known to be NP-complete even for near-planar graphs [Cabello and Mohar, SIAM J. Comput. 2013], that is, the graphs obtained from planar graphs by adding a single edge. Moreover, the local crossing number is hard to approximate within a factor $2 - \varepsilon$ for any $\varepsilon > 0$ [Urschel and Wellens, IPL 2021]. To address this computational intractability, Bannister, Cabello, and Eppstein [JGAA 2018] investigated the parameterized complexity of the case of $k = 1$, particularly focusing on structural parameterizations on input graphs, such as treedepth, vertex cover number, and feedback edge number. In this paper, we extend their approach by considering the general case $k \ge 1$ and give (tight) parameterized upper and lower bound results. In particular, we strengthen the aforementioned lower bound results to subclasses of constant-treewidth graphs: we show that testing $1$-planarity is NP-complete even for near-planar graphs with feedback vertex set number at most $3$ and pathwidth at most $4$, and the local crossing number is hard to approximate within any constant factor for graphs with feedback vertex set number at most $2$.