Tree Drawings with Columns

Our goal is to visualize an additional data dimension of a tree with multifaceted data through superimposition on vertical strips, which we call columns. Specifically, we extend upward drawings of unordered rooted trees where vertices have assigned heights by mapping each vertex to a column. Under an orthogonal drawing style and with every subtree within a column drawn planar, we consider different natural variants concerning the arrangement of subtrees within a column. We show that minimizing the number of crossings in such a drawing can be achieved in fixed-parameter tractable (FPT) time in the maximum vertex degree $\Delta$ for the most restrictive variant, while becoming NP-hard (even to approximate) already for a slightly relaxed variant. However, we provide an FPT algorithm in the number of crossings plus $\Delta$, and an FPT-approximation algorithm in $\Delta$ via a reduction to feedback arc set.