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Main Authors: Moharrami, Mehrdad, Moore, Cristopher, Xu, Jiaming
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.08790
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author Moharrami, Mehrdad
Moore, Cristopher
Xu, Jiaming
author_facet Moharrami, Mehrdad
Moore, Cristopher
Xu, Jiaming
contents We study the problem of detecting and recovering a planted spanning tree $M_n^*$ hidden within a complete, randomly weighted graph $G_n$. Specifically, each edge $e$ has a non-negative weight drawn independently from $P_n$ if $e \in M_n^*$ and from $Q_n$ otherwise, where $P_n \equiv P$ is fixed and $Q_n$ scales with $n$ such that its density at the origin satisfies $\lim_{n\to\infty} n Q'_n(0)=1.$ We consider two representative cases: when $M_n^*$ is either a uniform spanning tree or a uniform Hamiltonian path. We analyze the recovery performance of the minimum spanning tree (MST) algorithm and derive a fixed-point equation that characterizes the asymptotic fraction of edges in $M_n^*$ successfully recovered by the MST as $n \to \infty.$ Furthermore, we establish the asymptotic mean weight of the MST, extending Frieze's $ζ(3)$ result to the planted model. Leveraging this result, we design an efficient test based on the MST weight and show that it can distinguish the planted model from the unplanted model with vanishing testing error as $n \to \infty.$ Our analysis relies on an asymptotic characterization of the local structure of the planted model, employing the framework of local weak convergence.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2502_08790
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle The Planted Spanning Tree Problem
Moharrami, Mehrdad
Moore, Cristopher
Xu, Jiaming
Data Structures and Algorithms
Discrete Mathematics
05C80
We study the problem of detecting and recovering a planted spanning tree $M_n^*$ hidden within a complete, randomly weighted graph $G_n$. Specifically, each edge $e$ has a non-negative weight drawn independently from $P_n$ if $e \in M_n^*$ and from $Q_n$ otherwise, where $P_n \equiv P$ is fixed and $Q_n$ scales with $n$ such that its density at the origin satisfies $\lim_{n\to\infty} n Q'_n(0)=1.$ We consider two representative cases: when $M_n^*$ is either a uniform spanning tree or a uniform Hamiltonian path. We analyze the recovery performance of the minimum spanning tree (MST) algorithm and derive a fixed-point equation that characterizes the asymptotic fraction of edges in $M_n^*$ successfully recovered by the MST as $n \to \infty.$ Furthermore, we establish the asymptotic mean weight of the MST, extending Frieze's $ζ(3)$ result to the planted model. Leveraging this result, we design an efficient test based on the MST weight and show that it can distinguish the planted model from the unplanted model with vanishing testing error as $n \to \infty.$ Our analysis relies on an asymptotic characterization of the local structure of the planted model, employing the framework of local weak convergence.
title The Planted Spanning Tree Problem
topic Data Structures and Algorithms
Discrete Mathematics
05C80
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.08790