A linear time algorithm to compute the impact of all the articulation points

Abstract

The articulation points of an undirected connected graphs are those vertices whose removal increases the number of connected components of the graph, i.e. the vertices whose removal disconnects the graph. However, not all the articulation points are equal: the removal of some of them might end in a single vertex disconnected from the graph, whilst in other cases the graph can be split in several small pieces. In order to measure the effect of the removal of an articulation point, in \cite{AFL12} has been proposed the impact, defined as the number of vertices that get disconnected from the main (largest) surviving connected component (CC). In this paper we present the first linear time algorithm ($\mathcal{O}(m+n)$ for a graph with $n$ vertices and $m$ edges) to compute the impact of all the articulation points of the graph, thus improving from the $\mathcal{O}(a(m+n))\approx\mathcal{O}(nm+n^2)$ of the na\"ive algorithm, with $a$ being the number of articulation points of the graph.