In a seminal STOC'95 paper, titled "Euclidean spanners: short, thin and
lanky", Arya et al. devised a construction of Euclidean (1+\eps)-spanners
that achieves constant degree, diameter O(logn), and weight O(log2n)β Ο(MST), and has running time O(nβ logn). This construction
applies to n-point constant-dimensional Euclidean spaces. Moreover, Arya et
al. conjectured that the weight bound can be improved by a logarithmic factor,
without increasing the degree and the diameter of the spanner, and within the
same running time.
This conjecture of Arya et al. became a central open problem in the area of
Euclidean spanners.
In this paper we resolve the long-standing conjecture of Arya et al. in the
affirmative. Specifically, we present a construction of spanners with the same
stretch, degree, diameter, and running time, as in Arya et al.'s result, but
with optimal weight O(logn)β Ο(MST).
Moreover, our result is more general in three ways. First, we demonstrate
that the conjecture holds true not only in constant-dimensional Euclidean
spaces, but also in doubling metrics. Second, we provide a general tradeoff
between the three involved parameters, which is tight in the entire range.
Third, we devise a transformation that decreases the lightness of spanners in
general metrics, while keeping all their other parameters in check. Our main
result is obtained as a corollary of this transformation.Comment: A technical report of this paper was available online from April 4,
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