Additive Spanners and Distance Oracles in Quadratic Time

Let G be an unweighted, undirected graph. An additive k-spanner of G is a subgraph H that approximates all distances between pairs of nodes up to an additive error of +k, that is, it satisfies d_H(u,v) <= d_G(u,v)+k for all nodes u,v, where d is the shortest path distance. We give a deterministic algorithm that constructs an additive O(1)-spanner with O(n^(4/3)) edges in O(n^2) time. This should be compared with the randomized Monte Carlo algorithm by Woodruff [ICALP 2010] giving an additive 6-spanner with O(n^(4/3)log^3 n) edges in expected time O(n^2 log^2 n). An (alpha,beta)-approximate distance oracle for G is a data structure that supports the following distance queries between pairs of nodes in G. Given two nodes u, v it can in constant time compute a distance estimate d\u27 that satisfies d <= d\u27 <= alpha d + beta where d is the distance between u and v in G. Sommer [ICALP 2016] gave a randomized Monte Carlo (2,1)-distance oracle of size O(n^(5/3) polylog n) in expected time O(n^2 polylog n). As an application of the additive O(1)-spanner we improve the construction by Sommer [ICALP 2016] and give a Las Vegas (2,1)-distance oracle of size O(n^(5/3)) in time O(n^2). This also implies an algorithm that in O(n^2) time gives approximate distance for all pairs of nodes in G improving on the O(n^2 log n) algorithm by Baswana and Kavitha [SICOMP 2010]

Improved Approximate Distance Oracles: Bypassing the Thorup-Zwick Bound in Dense Graphs

Despite extensive research on distance oracles, there are still large gaps between the best constructions for spanners and distance oracles. Notably, there exist sparse spanners with a multiplicative stretch of $1+\varepsilon$ plus some additive stretch. A fundamental open problem is whether such a bound is achievable for distance oracles as well. Specifically, can we construct a distance oracle with multiplicative stretch better than 2, along with some additive stretch, while maintaining subquadratic space complexity? This question remains a crucial area of investigation, and finding a positive answer would be a significant step forward for distance oracles. Indeed, such oracles have been constructed for sparse graphs. However, in the more general case of dense graphs, it is currently unknown whether such oracles exist. In this paper, we contribute to the field by presenting the first distance oracles that achieve a multiplicative stretch of $1+\varepsilon$ along with a small additive stretch while maintaining subquadratic space complexity. Our results represent an advancement particularly for constructing efficient distance oracles for dense graphs. In addition, we present a whole family of oracles that, for any positive integer $k$, achieve a multiplicative stretch of $2k-1+\varepsilon$ using $o(n^{1+1/k})$ space

Fast 2-Approximate All-Pairs Shortest Paths

In this paper, we revisit the classic approximate All-Pairs Shortest Paths (APSP) problem in undirected graphs. For unweighted graphs, we provide an algorithm for $2$-approximate APSP in $\tilde O(n^{2.5-r}+n^{\omega(r)})$ time, for any $r\in[0,1]$. This is $O(n^{2.032})$ time, using known bounds for rectangular matrix multiplication~$n^{\omega(r)}$~[Le Gall, Urrutia, SODA 2018]. Our result improves on the $\tilde{O}(n^{2.25})$ bound of [Roddity, STOC 2023], and on the $\tilde{O}(m\sqrt n+n^2)$ bound of [Baswana, Kavitha, SICOMP 2010] for graphs with $m\geq n^{1.532}$ edges. For weighted graphs, we obtain $(2+\epsilon)$-approximate APSP in $\tilde O(n^{3-r}+n^{\omega(r)})$ time, for any $r\in [0,1]$. This is $O(n^{2.214})$ time using known bounds for $\omega(r)$. It improves on the state of the art bound of $O(n^{2.25})$ by [Kavitha, Algorithmica 2012]. Our techniques further lead to improved bounds in a wide range of density for weighted graphs. In particular, for the sparse regime we construct a distance oracle in $\tilde O(mn^{2/3})$ time that supports $2$-approximate queries in constant time. For sparse graphs, the preprocessing time of the algorithm matches conditional lower bounds [Patrascu, Roditty, Thorup, FOCS 2012; Abboud, Bringmann, Fischer, STOC 2023]. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first 2-approximate distance oracle that has subquadratic preprocessing time in sparse graphs. We also obtain new bounds in the near additive regime for unweighted graphs. We give faster algorithms for $(1+\epsilon,k)$-approximate APSP, for $k=2,4,6,8$. We obtain these results by incorporating fast rectangular matrix multiplications into various combinatorial algorithms that carefully balance out distance computation on layers of sparse graphs preserving certain distance information

Stronger 3-SUM Lower Bounds for Approximate Distance Oracles via Additive Combinatorics

The "short cycle removal" technique was recently introduced by Abboud, Bringmann, Khoury and Zamir (STOC '22) to prove fine-grained hardness of approximation. Its main technical result is that listing all triangles in an $n^{1/2}$-regular graph is $n^{2-o(1)}$-hard under the 3-SUM conjecture even when the number of short cycles is small; namely, when the number of $k$-cycles is $O(n^{k/2+\gamma})$ for $\gamma<1/2$. Abboud et al. achieve $\gamma\geq 1/4$ by applying structure vs. randomness arguments on graphs. In this paper, we take a step back and apply conceptually similar arguments on the numbers of the 3-SUM problem. Consequently, we achieve the best possible $\gamma=0$ and the following lower bounds under the 3-SUM conjecture: * Approximate distance oracles: The seminal Thorup-Zwick distance oracles achieve stretch $2k\pm O(1)$ after preprocessing a graph in $O(m n^{1/k})$ time. For the same stretch, and assuming the query time is $n^{o(1)}$ Abboud et al. proved an $\Omega(m^{1+\frac{1}{12.7552 \cdot k}})$ lower bound on the preprocessing time; we improve it to $\Omega(m^{1+\frac1{2k}})$ which is only a factor 2 away from the upper bound. We also obtain tight bounds for stretch $2+o(1)$ and $3-\epsilon$ and higher lower bounds for dynamic shortest paths. * Listing 4-cycles: Abboud et al. proved the first super-linear lower bound for listing all 4-cycles in a graph, ruling out $(m^{1.1927}+t)^{1+o(1)}$ time algorithms where $t$ is the number of 4-cycles. We settle the complexity of this basic problem by showing that the $\widetilde{O}(\min(m^{4/3},n^2) +t)$ upper bound is tight up to $n^{o(1)}$ factors. Our results exploit a rich tool set from additive combinatorics, most notably the Balog-Szemer\'edi-Gowers theorem and Rusza's covering lemma. A key ingredient that may be of independent interest is a subquadratic algorithm for 3-SUM if one of the sets has small doubling.Comment: Abstract shortened to fit arXiv requirement

Bridge Girth: A Unifying Notion in Network Design

A classic 1993 paper by Alth\H{o}fer et al. proved a tight reduction from spanners, emulators, and distance oracles to the extremal function $\gamma$ of high-girth graphs. This paper initiated a large body of work in network design, in which problems are attacked by reduction to $\gamma$ or the analogous extremal function for other girth concepts. In this paper, we introduce and study a new girth concept that we call the bridge girth of path systems, and we show that it can be used to significantly expand and improve this web of connections between girth problems and network design. We prove two kinds of results: 1) We write the maximum possible size of an $n$-node, $p$-path system with bridge girth $>k$ as $\beta(n, p, k)$, and we write a certain variant for "ordered" path systems as $\beta^*(n, p, k)$. We identify several arguments in the literature that implicitly show upper or lower bounds on $\beta, \beta^*$, and we provide some polynomially improvements to these bounds. In particular, we construct a tight lower bound for $\beta(n, p, 2)$, and we polynomially improve the upper bounds for $\beta(n, p, 4)$ and $\beta^*(n, p, \infty)$. 2) We show that many state-of-the-art results in network design can be recovered or improved via black-box reductions to $\beta$ or $\beta^*$. Examples include bounds for distance/reachability preservers, exact hopsets, shortcut sets, the flow-cut gaps for directed multicut and sparsest cut, an integrality gap for directed Steiner forest. We believe that the concept of bridge girth can lead to a stronger and more organized map of the research area. Towards this, we leave many open problems, related to both bridge girth reductions and extremal bounds on the size of path systems with high bridge girth