Compatible connectivity-augmentation

Motivated by applications to graph morphing, we consider the following compatible connectivity-augmentation problem: We are given a labelled $n$-vertex planar graph, $\cal{G}$, that has $r\ge 2$ connected components, and $k\ge 2$ isomorphic planar straight-line drawings, $G_1,\ldots,G_k$, of $\cal{G}$. We wish to augment $\cal G$ by adding vertices and edges to make it connected in such a way that these vertices and edges can be added to $G_1,\ldots,G_k$ as points and straight-line segments, respectively, to obtain $k$ planar straight-line drawings isomorphic to the augmentation of $\cal G$. We show that adding $\Theta(nr^{1-1/k})$ edges and vertices to $\cal{G}$ is always sufficient and sometimes necessary to achieve this goal. The upper bound holds for all $r\in\{2,\ldots,n\}$ and $k\ge 2$ and is achievable by an algorithm whose running time is $O(nr^{1-1/k})$ for $k=O(1)$ and whose running time is $O(kn^2)$ for general values of $k$. The lower bound holds for all $r\in\{2,\ldots,n/4\}$ and $k\ge 2$.