English

Min-cost-flow preserving bijection between subgraphs and orientations

Combinatorics 2021-12-20 v1 Discrete Mathematics Data Structures and Algorithms

Abstract

Consider an undirected graph G=(V,E)G=(V,E). A subgraph of GG is a subset of its edges, whilst an orientation of GG is an assignment of a direction to each edge. Provided with an integer circulation-demand d:VZd:V\to \mathbb{Z}, we show an explicit and efficiently computable bijection between subgraphs of GG on which a dd-flow exists and orientations on which a dd-flow exists. Moreover, given a cost function w:E(0,)w:E\to (0,\infty) we can find such a bijection which preserves the ww-min-cost-flow. In 2013, Kozma and Moran showed, using dimensional methods, that the number of subgraphs kk-connecting a vertex ss to a vertex tt is the same as the number of orientations kk-connecting ss to tt. An application of our result is an efficient, bijective proof of this fact.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2112.09250,
  title  = {Min-cost-flow preserving bijection between subgraphs and orientations},
  author = {Izhak Elmaleh and Ohad N. Feldheim},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2112.09250},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

5 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-24T08:21:18.528Z