Canonical Join Trees

Abstract

A rooted join tree of an acyclic hypergraph is canonical if each of its nodes has minimum possible depth among all join trees with the same root. Luo et al. [ICDT 2026, article 17] introduce these trees and pose the open problem of characterizing acyclic hypergraphs according to whether they admit canonical join trees for none, some, or all hyperedges as root. In this paper, we resolve this question. We show that each canonical join tree is unique with respect to its root and give a first characterisation for such trees. Additionally, we characterise hypergraphs that admit a canonical join tree for none, some, or all their hyperedges as root. Lastly, we present a linear-time algorithm that constructs a canonical join tree whenever one exists.