Near-Optimal Distance Emulator for Planar Graphs

Given a graph $G$ and a set of terminals $T$, a \emph{distance emulator} of $G$ is another graph $H$ (not necessarily a subgraph of $G$) containing $T$, such that all the pairwise distances in $G$ between vertices of $T$ are preserved in $H$. An important open question is to find the smallest possible distance emulator. We prove that, given any subset of $k$ terminals in an $n$-vertex undirected unweighted planar graph, we can construct in $\tilde O(n)$ time a distance emulator of size $\tilde O(\min(k^2,\sqrt{k\cdot n}))$. This is optimal up to logarithmic factors. The existence of such distance emulator provides a straightforward framework to solve distance-related problems on planar graphs: Replace the input graph with the distance emulator, and apply whatever algorithm available to the resulting emulator. In particular, our result implies that, on any unweighted undirected planar graph, one can compute all-pairs shortest path distances among $k$ terminals in $\tilde O(n)$ time when $k=O(n^{1/3})$.