Thin Trees for Near Minimum Cuts

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Klein, Nathan, Olver, Neil, Yeoh, Zi Song
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2026
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author Klein, Nathan
Olver, Neil
Yeoh, Zi Song
author_facet Klein, Nathan
Olver, Neil
Yeoh, Zi Song
contents The strong thin tree conjecture states that every $k$-edge-connected graph $G$ contains an $O(1/k)$-thin spanning tree, meaning a spanning tree which contains at most an $O(1/k)$ fraction of the edges across each cut in $G$. This conjecture is still open despite significant effort; the best current result by Anari and Oveis Gharan shows the existence of an $O(\text{polyloglog}(n)/k)$-thin tree. In this work, we demonstrate that the conjecture is true if one only requires thinness for the set of $η$-near minimum cuts of the graph for $η= 1/40$, in other words, for the set of cuts with fewer than $(1+1/40)k$ edges. Our approach constructs such a tree in polynomial time. To show this, we utilize the structure of near minimum cuts, and in particular the polygon representation of Benczúr and Goemans, to reduce to the previously solved problem of finding a spanning tree that is $O(1/k)$-thin for all sets in a laminar family.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_12669
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Thin Trees for Near Minimum Cuts
Klein, Nathan
Olver, Neil
Yeoh, Zi Song
Data Structures and Algorithms
The strong thin tree conjecture states that every $k$-edge-connected graph $G$ contains an $O(1/k)$-thin spanning tree, meaning a spanning tree which contains at most an $O(1/k)$ fraction of the edges across each cut in $G$. This conjecture is still open despite significant effort; the best current result by Anari and Oveis Gharan shows the existence of an $O(\text{polyloglog}(n)/k)$-thin tree. In this work, we demonstrate that the conjecture is true if one only requires thinness for the set of $η$-near minimum cuts of the graph for $η= 1/40$, in other words, for the set of cuts with fewer than $(1+1/40)k$ edges. Our approach constructs such a tree in polynomial time. To show this, we utilize the structure of near minimum cuts, and in particular the polygon representation of Benczúr and Goemans, to reduce to the previously solved problem of finding a spanning tree that is $O(1/k)$-thin for all sets in a laminar family.
title Thin Trees for Near Minimum Cuts
topic Data Structures and Algorithms
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.12669