Finding k Simple Shortest Paths and Cycles

• DOI: 10.4230/lipics.isaac.2016.8
• Publication Date: 2015-01-01
• Authors: Agarwal, Udit; Ramachandran, Vijaya
• Keywords: FOS: Computer and information sciences; Discrete Mathematics (cs.DM); Shortest Paths; Enumerating Simple Paths; Graph Algorithms; 0102 computer and information sciences; k Simple Shortest Paths; 01 natural sciences; Enumerat- ing Simple Cycles; 004; Computer Science - Data Structures and Algorithms; Data Structures and Algorithms (cs.DS); ddc:004; Computer Science - Discrete Mathematics

The current version includes new results for undirected graphs. In Section 4, the notion of an (m,n) reduction is generalized to an f(m,n) reduction<br/>The problem of finding multiple simple shortest paths in a weighted directed graph $G=(V,E)$ has many applications, and is considerably more difficult than the corresponding problem when cycles are allowed in the paths. Even for a single source-sink pair, it is known that two simple shortest paths cannot be found in time polynomially smaller than $n^3$ (where $n=|V|$) unless the All-Pairs Shortest Paths problem can be solved in a similar time bound. The latter is a well-known open problem in algorithm design. We consider the all-pairs version of the problem, and we give a new algorithm to find $k$ simple shortest paths for all pairs of vertices. For $k=2$, our algorithm runs in $O(mn + n^2 \log n)$ time (where $m=|E|$), which is almost the same bound as for the single pair case, and for $k=3$ we improve earlier bounds. Our approach is based on forming suitable path extensions to find simple shortest paths; this method is different from the `detour finding' technique used in most of the prior work on simple shortest paths, replacement paths, and distance sensitivity oracles. Enumerating simple cycles is a well-studied classical problem. We present new algorithms for generating simple cycles and simple paths in $G$ in non-decreasing order of their weights; the algorithm for generating simple paths is much faster, and uses another variant of path extensions. We also give hardness results for sparse graphs, relative to the complexity of computing a minimum weight cycle in a graph, for several variants of problems related to finding $k$ simple paths and cycles.<br/>