Bounds for the crossing number of the N-cube

Let Q_n denote the n-dimensional hypercube. In this paper we derive upper and lower bounds for the crossing number v(Q_n), i.e., the minimum number of edge-crossings in any planar drawing of Q_n. The upper bound is close to a result conjectured by Eggleton and Guy and the lower bound is a significant improvement over what was previously known. Let N = 2ⁿ be the number of vertices of Q_n. We show that v(Q_n) < 1/6N². For the lower bound we prove that v(Q_n) = Ω(N(lg N)^{c lg lg N}), where c > 0 is a constant and lg is the logarithm base 2. The best lower bound using standard arguments is v(Q_n) = Ω(N(lg N)²). The lower bound is obtained by constructing a large family of homeomorphs of a subcube with the property that no given pair of edges can appear in more than a constant number of the homeomorphs.