Drawing Shortest Paths in Geodetic Graphs

Abstract

Motivated by the fact that in a space where shortest paths are unique, no two shortest paths meet twice, we study a question posed by Greg Bodwin: Given a geodetic graph G, i.e., an unweighted graph in which the shortest path between any pair of vertices is unique, is there a philogeodetic drawing of G, i.e., a drawing of G in which the curves of any two shortest paths meet at most once? We answer this question in the negative by showing the existence of geodetic graphs that require some pair of shortest paths to cross at least four times. The bound on the number of crossings is tight for the class of graphs we construct. Furthermore, we exhibit geodetic graphs of diameter two that do not admit a philogeodetic drawing. On the positive side we show that geodetic graphs admit a philogeodetic drawing if both the diameter and the density are very low.