Shortcutting for Negative-Weight Shortest Path
Data Structures and Algorithms
2025-11-18 v1
Abstract
Consider the single-source shortest paths problem on a directed graph with real-valued edge weights. We solve this problem in time, improving on prior work of Fineman (STOC 2024) and Huang-Jin-Quanrud (SODA 2025, 2026) on dense graphs. Our main technique is an shortcutting procedure that iteratively reduces the number of negative-weight edges along shortest paths by a constant factor.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2511.12714,
title = {Shortcutting for Negative-Weight Shortest Path},
author = {George Z. Li and Jason Li and Satish Rao and Junkai Zhang},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2511.12714},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
14-page STOC submission + new results in appendix