Regular and biregular planar cages

Abstract

We study the Cage Problem for regular and biregular planar graphs. A $(k,g)$-graph is a $k$-regular graph with girth $g$. A $(k,g)$-cage is a $(k,g)$-graph of minimum order. It is not difficult to conclude that the regular planar cages are the Platonic Solids. A $(\{r,m\};g)$-graph is a graph of girth $g$ whose vertices have degrees $r$ and $m.$ A $(\{r,m\};g)$-cage is a $(\{r,m\};g)$-graph of minimum order. In this case we determine the triplets of values $(\{r,m\};g)$ for which there exist planar $(\{r,m\};g)$--graphs, for all those values we construct examples. Furthermore, for many triplets $(\{r,m\};g)$ we build the $(\{r,m\};g)$-cages.