Thickness-Two Graphs Part Two: More New Nine-Critical Graphs, Independence Ratio, Cloned Planar Graphs, and Singly and Doubly Outerplanar Graphs

There are numerous means for measuring the closeness to planarity of a graph such as crossing number, splitting number, and a variety of thickness parameters. We focus on the classical concept of the thickness of a graph, and we add to earlier work in [4]. In particular, we offer new 9-critical thickness-two graphs on 17, 25, and 33 vertices, all of which provide counterexamples to a conjecture on independence ratio of Albertson; we investigate three classes of graphs, namely singly and doubly outerplanar graphs, and cloned planar graphs. We give a sharp upper bound for the largest chromatic number of the cloned planar graphs, and we give upper and lower bounds for the largest chromatic number of the former two classes.