Min st-cut oracle for planar graphs with near-linear preprocessing time

Glencora Borradaile*, Piotr Sankowski, Christian Wulff-Nilsen

*Corresponding author for this work
15 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

For an undirected n-vertex planar graph G with non-negative edge-weights, we consider the following type of query: given two vertices s and t in G, what is the weight of a min st-cut in G? We show how to answer such queries in constant time with O(n log5 n) preprocessing time and O(n log n) space. We use a Gomory-Hu tree to represent all the pairwise min st-cuts implicitly. Previously, no subquadratic time algorithm was known for this problem. Our oracle can be extended to report the min st-cuts in time proportional to their size. Since all-pairs min st-cut and the minimum cycle basis are dual problems in planar graphs, we also obtain an implicit representation of a minimum cycle basis in O(n log5 n) time and O(n log n) space and an explicit representation with additional O(C) time and space where C is the size of the basis. To obtain our results, we require that shortest paths be unique; this assumption can be removed deterministically with an additional O(log2 n) running-time factor.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publication2010 51st Annual IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS)
Number of pages10
PublisherIEEE
Publication date2010
Pages601-610
ISBN (Print)978-1-4244-8525-3
ISBN (Electronic)978-0-7695-4244-7
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2010
Event51st Annual IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science - Las Vegas, United States
Duration: 23 Oct 201026 Oct 2010
Conference number: 51

Conference

Conference51st Annual IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science
Number51
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityLas Vegas
Period23/10/201026/10/2010

Keywords

  • Algorithms
  • Graph theory
  • Networks

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