Multiplicative Spanners in Minor-Free Graphs

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Bodwin, Greg, Hoppenworth, Gary, Tan, Zihan
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Bodwin, Greg
Hoppenworth, Gary
Tan, Zihan
author_facet Bodwin, Greg
Hoppenworth, Gary
Tan, Zihan
contents In FOCS 2017, Borradaille, Le, and Wulff-Nilsen addressed a long-standing open problem by proving that minor-free graphs have light spanners. Specifically, they proved that every $K_h$-minor-free graph has a $(1+ε)$-spanner of lightness $O_ε(h \sqrt{\log h})$, hence constant when $h$ and $ε$ are regarded as constants. We extend this result by showing that a more expressive size/stretch tradeoff is available. Specifically: for any positive integer $k$, every $n$-node, $K_h$-minor-free graph has a $(2k-1)$-spanner with sparsity \[O\left(h^{\frac{2}{k+1}} \cdot \text{polylog } h\right),\] and a $(1+ε)(2k-1)$-spanner with lightness \[O_ε\left(h^{\frac{2}{k+1}} \cdot \text{polylog } h \right).\] We further prove that this exponent $\frac{2}{k+1}$ is best possible, assuming the girth conjecture. At a technical level, our proofs leverage the recent improvements by Postle (2020) to the remarkable density increment theorem for minor-free graphs.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2504_16463
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
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spellingShingle Multiplicative Spanners in Minor-Free Graphs
Bodwin, Greg
Hoppenworth, Gary
Tan, Zihan
Data Structures and Algorithms
In FOCS 2017, Borradaille, Le, and Wulff-Nilsen addressed a long-standing open problem by proving that minor-free graphs have light spanners. Specifically, they proved that every $K_h$-minor-free graph has a $(1+ε)$-spanner of lightness $O_ε(h \sqrt{\log h})$, hence constant when $h$ and $ε$ are regarded as constants. We extend this result by showing that a more expressive size/stretch tradeoff is available. Specifically: for any positive integer $k$, every $n$-node, $K_h$-minor-free graph has a $(2k-1)$-spanner with sparsity \[O\left(h^{\frac{2}{k+1}} \cdot \text{polylog } h\right),\] and a $(1+ε)(2k-1)$-spanner with lightness \[O_ε\left(h^{\frac{2}{k+1}} \cdot \text{polylog } h \right).\] We further prove that this exponent $\frac{2}{k+1}$ is best possible, assuming the girth conjecture. At a technical level, our proofs leverage the recent improvements by Postle (2020) to the remarkable density increment theorem for minor-free graphs.
title Multiplicative Spanners in Minor-Free Graphs
topic Data Structures and Algorithms
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.16463