Sensitivity Oracles for All-Pairs Mincuts

Abstract

Let $G=(V,E)$ be an undirected unweighted graph on $n$ vertices and $m$ edges. We address the problem of sensitivity oracle for all-pairs mincuts in $G$ defined as follows. Build a compact data structure that, on receiving any pair of vertices $s,t\in V$ and failure (or insertion) of any edge as query, can efficiently report the mincut between $s$ and $t$ after the failure (or the insertion). To the best of our knowledge, there exists no data structure for this problem which takes $o(mn)$ space and a non-trivial query time. We present the following results. - Our first data structure occupies ${\cal O}(n^2)$ space and guarantees ${\cal O}(1)$ query time to report the value of resulting $(s,t)$-mincut upon failure (or insertion) of any edge. Moreover, the set of vertices defining a resulting $(s,t)$-mincut after the update can be reported in ${\cal O}(n)$ time which is worst-case optimal. - Our second data structure optimizes space at the expense of increased query time. It takes ${\cal O}(m)$ space -- which is also the space taken by $G$. The query time is ${\cal O}(\min(m,n c_{s,t}))$ where $c_{s,t}$ is the value of the mincut between $s$ and $t$ in $G$. This query time is faster by a factor of $\Omega(\min(m^{1/3},\sqrt{n}))$ compared to the best known deterministic algorithm to compute a $(s,t)$-mincut from scratch. - If we are only interested in knowing if failure (or insertion) of an edge changes the value of $(s,t)$-mincut, we can distribute our ${\cal O}(n^2)$ space data structure evenly among $n$ vertices. For any failed (or inserted) edge we only require the data structures stored at its endpoints to determine if the value of $(s,t)$-mincut has changed for any $s,t \in V$.