Online Disjoint Spanning Trees and Polymatroid Bases

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Chandrasekaran, Karthekeyan, Chekuri, Chandra, Zhu, Weihao
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Chandrasekaran, Karthekeyan
Chekuri, Chandra
Zhu, Weihao
author_facet Chandrasekaran, Karthekeyan
Chekuri, Chandra
Zhu, Weihao
contents Finding the maximum number of disjoint spanning trees in a given graph is a well-studied problem with several applications and connections. The Tutte-Nash-Williams theorem provides a min-max relation for this problem which also extends to disjoint bases in a matroid and leads to efficient algorithms. Several other packing problems such as element disjoint Steiner trees, disjoint set covers, and disjoint dominating sets are NP-Hard but admit an $O(\log n)$-approximation. Călinescu, Chekuri, and Vondrák viewed all these packing problems as packing bases of a polymatroid and provided a unified perspective. Motivated by applications in wireless networks, recent works have studied the problem of packing set covers in the online model. The online model poses new challenges for packing problems. In particular, it is not clear how to pack a maximum number of disjoint spanning trees in a graph when edges arrive online. Motivated by these applications and theoretical considerations, we formulate an online model for packing bases of a polymatroid, and describe a randomized algorithm with a polylogarithmic competitive ratio. Our algorithm is based on interesting connections to the notion of quotients of a polymatroid that has recently seen applications in polymatroid sparsification. We generalize the previously known result for the online disjoint set cover problem and also address several other packing problems in a unified fashion. For the special case of packing disjoint spanning trees in a graph (or a hypergraph) whose edges arrive online, we provide an alternative to our general algorithm that is simpler and faster while achieving the same poly-logarithmic competitive ratio.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2503_19999
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Online Disjoint Spanning Trees and Polymatroid Bases
Chandrasekaran, Karthekeyan
Chekuri, Chandra
Zhu, Weihao
Data Structures and Algorithms
Finding the maximum number of disjoint spanning trees in a given graph is a well-studied problem with several applications and connections. The Tutte-Nash-Williams theorem provides a min-max relation for this problem which also extends to disjoint bases in a matroid and leads to efficient algorithms. Several other packing problems such as element disjoint Steiner trees, disjoint set covers, and disjoint dominating sets are NP-Hard but admit an $O(\log n)$-approximation. Călinescu, Chekuri, and Vondrák viewed all these packing problems as packing bases of a polymatroid and provided a unified perspective. Motivated by applications in wireless networks, recent works have studied the problem of packing set covers in the online model. The online model poses new challenges for packing problems. In particular, it is not clear how to pack a maximum number of disjoint spanning trees in a graph when edges arrive online. Motivated by these applications and theoretical considerations, we formulate an online model for packing bases of a polymatroid, and describe a randomized algorithm with a polylogarithmic competitive ratio. Our algorithm is based on interesting connections to the notion of quotients of a polymatroid that has recently seen applications in polymatroid sparsification. We generalize the previously known result for the online disjoint set cover problem and also address several other packing problems in a unified fashion. For the special case of packing disjoint spanning trees in a graph (or a hypergraph) whose edges arrive online, we provide an alternative to our general algorithm that is simpler and faster while achieving the same poly-logarithmic competitive ratio.
title Online Disjoint Spanning Trees and Polymatroid Bases
topic Data Structures and Algorithms
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.19999