@inproceedings{1685, abstract = {Given a graph G cellularly embedded on a surface Σ of genus g, a cut graph is a subgraph of G such that cutting Σ along G yields a topological disk. We provide a fixed parameter tractable approximation scheme for the problem of computing the shortest cut graph, that is, for any ε > 0, we show how to compute a (1 + ε) approximation of the shortest cut graph in time f(ε, g)n3. Our techniques first rely on the computation of a spanner for the problem using the technique of brick decompositions, to reduce the problem to the case of bounded tree-width. Then, to solve the bounded tree-width case, we introduce a variant of the surface-cut decomposition of Rué, Sau and Thilikos, which may be of independent interest.}, author = {Cohen Addad, Vincent and De Mesmay, Arnaud N}, location = {Patras, Greece}, pages = {386 -- 398}, publisher = {Springer}, title = {{A fixed parameter tractable approximation scheme for the optimal cut graph of a surface}}, doi = {10.1007/978-3-662-48350-3_33}, volume = {9294}, year = {2015}, }