The product structure of squaregraphs

Abstract

A squaregraph is a plane graph in which each internal face is a $4$-cycle and each internal vertex has degree at least 4. This paper proves that every squaregraph is isomorphic to a subgraph of the semi-strong product of an outerplanar graph and a path. We generalise this result for infinite squaregraphs, and show that this is best possible in the sense that "outerplanar graph" cannot be replaced by "forest".