DAG Covers: The Steiner Point Effect

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Bhore, Sujoy, Chang, Hsien-Chih, Conroy, Jonathan, Filtser, Arnold, Oh, Eunjin, Wein, Nicole, Zheng, Da Wei
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866917385582149632
author Bhore, Sujoy
Chang, Hsien-Chih
Conroy, Jonathan
Filtser, Arnold
Oh, Eunjin
Wein, Nicole
Zheng, Da Wei
author_facet Bhore, Sujoy
Chang, Hsien-Chih
Conroy, Jonathan
Filtser, Arnold
Oh, Eunjin
Wein, Nicole
Zheng, Da Wei
contents Given a weighted digraph $G$, a $(t,g,μ)$-DAG cover is a collection of $g$ dominating DAGs $D_1,\dots,D_g$ such that all distances are approximately preserved: for every pair $(u,v)$ of vertices, $\min_id_{D_i}(u,v)\le t\cdot d_{G}(u,v)$, and the total number of non-$G$ edges is bounded by $|(\cup_i D_i)\setminus G|\le μ$. Assadi, Hoppenworth, and Wein [STOC 25] and Filtser [SODA 26] studied DAG covers for general digraphs. This paper initiates the study of \emph{Steiner} DAG cover, where the DAGs are allowed to contain Steiner points. We obtain Steiner DAG covers on the important classes of planar digraphs and low-treewidth digraphs. Specifically, we show that any digraph with treewidth tw admits a $(1,2,\tilde{O}(n\cdot tw))$-Steiner DAG cover. For planar digraphs we provide a $(1+\varepsilon,2,\tilde{O}_\varepsilon(n))$-Steiner DAG cover. We also demonstrate a stark difference between Steiner and non-Steiner DAG covers. As a lower bound, we show that any non-Steiner DAG cover for graphs with treewidth $1$ with stretch $t<2$ and sub-quadratic number of extra edges requires $Ω(\log n)$ DAGs.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2604_04186
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle DAG Covers: The Steiner Point Effect
Bhore, Sujoy
Chang, Hsien-Chih
Conroy, Jonathan
Filtser, Arnold
Oh, Eunjin
Wein, Nicole
Zheng, Da Wei
Data Structures and Algorithms
Given a weighted digraph $G$, a $(t,g,μ)$-DAG cover is a collection of $g$ dominating DAGs $D_1,\dots,D_g$ such that all distances are approximately preserved: for every pair $(u,v)$ of vertices, $\min_id_{D_i}(u,v)\le t\cdot d_{G}(u,v)$, and the total number of non-$G$ edges is bounded by $|(\cup_i D_i)\setminus G|\le μ$. Assadi, Hoppenworth, and Wein [STOC 25] and Filtser [SODA 26] studied DAG covers for general digraphs. This paper initiates the study of \emph{Steiner} DAG cover, where the DAGs are allowed to contain Steiner points. We obtain Steiner DAG covers on the important classes of planar digraphs and low-treewidth digraphs. Specifically, we show that any digraph with treewidth tw admits a $(1,2,\tilde{O}(n\cdot tw))$-Steiner DAG cover. For planar digraphs we provide a $(1+\varepsilon,2,\tilde{O}_\varepsilon(n))$-Steiner DAG cover. We also demonstrate a stark difference between Steiner and non-Steiner DAG covers. As a lower bound, we show that any non-Steiner DAG cover for graphs with treewidth $1$ with stretch $t<2$ and sub-quadratic number of extra edges requires $Ω(\log n)$ DAGs.
title DAG Covers: The Steiner Point Effect
topic Data Structures and Algorithms
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.04186