Closing the Gap Between Directed Hopsets and Shortcut Sets

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Bernstein, Aaron, Wein, Nicole
Format: Preprint
Published: 2022
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author Bernstein, Aaron
Wein, Nicole
author_facet Bernstein, Aaron
Wein, Nicole
contents For an n-vertex directed graph $G = (V,E)$, a $β$-\emph{shortcut set} $H$ is a set of additional edges $H \subseteq V \times V$ such that $G \cup H$ has the same transitive closure as $G$, and for every pair $u,v \in V$, there is a $uv$-path in $G \cup H$ with at most $β$ edges. A natural generalization of shortcut sets to distances is a $(β,ε)$-\emph{hopset} $H \subseteq V \times V$, where the requirement is that $H$ and $G \cup H$ have the same shortest-path distances, and for every $u,v \in V$, there is a $(1+ε)$-approximate shortest path in $G \cup H$ with at most $β$ edges. There is a large literature on the tradeoff between the size of a shortcut set / hopset and the value of $β$. We highlight the most natural point on this tradeoff: what is the minimum value of $β$, such that for any graph $G$, there exists a $β$-shortcut set (or a $(β,ε)$-hopset) with $O(n)$ edges? Not only is this a natural structural question in its own right, but shortcuts sets / hopsets form the core of many distributed, parallel, and dynamic algorithms for reachability / shortest paths. Until very recently the best known upper bound was a folklore construction showing $β= O(n^{1/2})$, but in a breakthrough result Kogan and Parter [SODA 2022] improve this to $β= \tilde{O}(n^{1/3})$ for shortcut sets and $\tilde{O}(n^{2/5})$ for hopsets. Our result is to close the gap between shortcut sets and hopsets. That is, we show that for any graph $G$ and any fixed $ε$ there is a $(\tilde{O}(n^{1/3}),ε)$ hopset with $O(n)$ edges. More generally, we achieve a smooth tradeoff between hopset size and $β$ which exactly matches the tradeoff of Kogan and Parter for shortcut sets (up to polylog factors). Using a very recent black-box reduction of Kogan and Parter, our new hopset implies improved bounds for approximate distance preservers.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2207_04507
institution arXiv
publishDate 2022
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Closing the Gap Between Directed Hopsets and Shortcut Sets
Bernstein, Aaron
Wein, Nicole
Data Structures and Algorithms
For an n-vertex directed graph $G = (V,E)$, a $β$-\emph{shortcut set} $H$ is a set of additional edges $H \subseteq V \times V$ such that $G \cup H$ has the same transitive closure as $G$, and for every pair $u,v \in V$, there is a $uv$-path in $G \cup H$ with at most $β$ edges. A natural generalization of shortcut sets to distances is a $(β,ε)$-\emph{hopset} $H \subseteq V \times V$, where the requirement is that $H$ and $G \cup H$ have the same shortest-path distances, and for every $u,v \in V$, there is a $(1+ε)$-approximate shortest path in $G \cup H$ with at most $β$ edges. There is a large literature on the tradeoff between the size of a shortcut set / hopset and the value of $β$. We highlight the most natural point on this tradeoff: what is the minimum value of $β$, such that for any graph $G$, there exists a $β$-shortcut set (or a $(β,ε)$-hopset) with $O(n)$ edges? Not only is this a natural structural question in its own right, but shortcuts sets / hopsets form the core of many distributed, parallel, and dynamic algorithms for reachability / shortest paths. Until very recently the best known upper bound was a folklore construction showing $β= O(n^{1/2})$, but in a breakthrough result Kogan and Parter [SODA 2022] improve this to $β= \tilde{O}(n^{1/3})$ for shortcut sets and $\tilde{O}(n^{2/5})$ for hopsets. Our result is to close the gap between shortcut sets and hopsets. That is, we show that for any graph $G$ and any fixed $ε$ there is a $(\tilde{O}(n^{1/3}),ε)$ hopset with $O(n)$ edges. More generally, we achieve a smooth tradeoff between hopset size and $β$ which exactly matches the tradeoff of Kogan and Parter for shortcut sets (up to polylog factors). Using a very recent black-box reduction of Kogan and Parter, our new hopset implies improved bounds for approximate distance preservers.
title Closing the Gap Between Directed Hopsets and Shortcut Sets
topic Data Structures and Algorithms
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2207.04507