Undirected 3-Fault Replacement Path in Nearly Cubic Time

TL;DR

This paper presents a nearly cubic time algorithm for 3-fault replacement paths in undirected weighted graphs, advancing the efficiency of fault-tolerant shortest path computations and nearly matching the theoretical output size.

Contribution

Introduces a deterministic $ ilde{O}(n^3)$ time algorithm for 3FRP in undirected graphs and develops an incremental distance sensitivity oracle with efficient update and query times.

Findings

3FRP in undirected graphs can be solved in nearly optimal $ ilde{O}(n^3)$ time.

Constructed an incremental distance sensitivity oracle with $ ilde{O}(n^2)$ update time.

Established that a truly subcubic algorithm for 2FRP likely does not exist under APSP-hardness.

Abstract

Given a graph $G=(V,E)$ and two vertices $s,t\in V$, the $f$-fault replacement path ($f$FRP) problem computes for every set of edges $F$ where $|F|\leq f$, the distance from $s$ to $t$ when edges in $F$ fail. A recent result shows that 2FRP in directed graphs can be solved in $\tilde{O}(n^3)$ time [arXiv:2209.07016]. In this paper, we show a 3FRP algorithm in deterministic $\tilde{O}(n^3)$ time for undirected weighted graphs, which almost matches the size of the output. This implies that $f$FRP in undirected graphs can be solved in almost optimal $\tilde{O}(n^f)$ time for all $f\geq 3$. To construct our 3FRP algorithm, we introduce an incremental distance sensitivity oracle (DSO) with $\tilde{O}(n^2)$ worst-case update time, while preprocessing time, space, and query time are still $\tilde{O}(n^3)$, $\tilde{O}(n^2)$ and $\tilde{O}(1)$, respectively, which match the static DSO [Bernstein and Karger 2009]. Here in a DSO, we can preprocess a graph so that the distance between any pair of vertices given any failed edge can be answered efficiently. From the recent result in [arXiv:2211.05178], we can obtain an offline dynamic DSO from the incremental worst-case DSO, which makes the construction of our 3FRP algorithm more convenient. By the offline dynamic DSO, we can also construct a 2-fault single-source replacement path (2-fault SSRP) algorithm in $\tilde{O}(n^3)$ time, that is, from a given vertex $s$, we want to find the distance to any vertex $t$ when any pair of edges fail. Thus the $\tilde{O}(n^3)$ time complexity for 2-fault SSRP is also almost optimal. Now we know that in undirected graphs 1FRP can be solved in $\tilde{O}(m)$ time [Nardelli, Proietti, Widmayer 2001], and 2FRP and 3FRP in undirected graphs can be solved in $\tilde{O}(n^3)$ time. In this paper, we also show that a truly subcubic algorithm for 2FRP in undirected graphs does not exist under APSP-hardness conjecture.