Global minimum cuts in surface embedded graphs
Jeff Erickson, Kyle J. Fox, Amir Nayyeri · 2012
We give a deterministic algorithm to find the minimum cut in a surface-embedded graph in near-linear time. Given an undirected graph embedded on an orientable surface of genus g, our algorithm computes the minimum cut in g O(g) n log log n time, matching the running time of the fastest algorithm known for planar graphs, due to Ł ˛acki and Sankowski, for any constant g. Indeed, our algorithm calls Ł ˛acki and Sankowski’s recent O(n log log n) time planar algorithm as a subroutine. Previously, the best time bounds known for this problem followed from two algorithms for general sparse graphs: a randomized algorithm of Karger that runs in O(n log³ n) time and succeeds with high probability, and a deterministic algorithm of Nagamochi and Ibaraki that runs in O(n² log n) time. We can also achieve a deterministic g O(g) n² log log n time bound by repeatedly applying the best known algorithm for minimum (s, t)-cuts in surface graphs. The bulk of our work focuses on the case where the dual of the minimum cut splits the underlying surface into multiple components with positive genus.