All-pairs minimum cuts in near-linear time for surface-embedded graphs

Abstract

For an undirected n-vertex graph G with non-negative edge-weights, we consider the following type of query: given two vertices s and t in G, what is the weight of a minimum st-cut in G? We solve this problem in preprocessing time O(n log3 n) for graphs of bounded genus, giving the first sub-quadratic time algorithm for this class of graphs. Our result also improves by a logarithmic factor a previous algorithm by Borradaile, Sankowski and Wulff-Nilsen (FOCS 2010) that applied only to planar graphs. Our algorithm constructs a Gomory-Hu tree for the given graph, providing a data structure with space O(n) that can answer minimum-cut queries in constant time. The dependence on the genus of the input graph in our preprocessing time is 2O(g2).