Polynomial-size encoding of all cuts of small value in integer-valued symmetric submodular functions
Abstract
We study connectivity functions, that is, integer-valued symmetric submodular functions on a finite ground set attaining on the empty set. For a connectivity function on an -element set and an integer , we show that the family of all sets with admits a polynomial-size representation: it can be described by a list of at most items, each consisting of a set to be included, another set to be excluded, and a partition of remaining elements, such that the union of some members of the partition and the set to be included are precisely all sets with . We also give an algorithm that constructs this representation in time , where is the oracle time to evaluate . This generalizes the low rank structure theorem of Boja\'nczyk, Pilipczuk, Przybyszewski, Soko{\l}owski, and Stamoulis [Low rank MSO, arXiv, 2025] on cut-rank functions on graphs to general connectivity functions. As an application, for fixed , we obtain a polynomial-time algorithm for finding a set with and a prescribed cardinality constraint on .
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2603.10710,
title = {Polynomial-size encoding of all cuts of small value in integer-valued symmetric submodular functions},
author = {Sang-il Oum and Marek Sokołowski},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2603.10710},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
11 pages; fix a minor issue on the definition of an interpolation of a connectivity function