English

A Refutation of Elmasry's $\tilde{O}(m \sqrt{n})$-Time Algorithm for Single-Source Shortest Paths

Data Structures and Algorithms 2025-08-08 v1

Abstract

In this note we examine the recent paper "Breaking the Bellman-Ford Shortest-Path Bound" by Amr Elmasry, where he presents an algorithm for the single-source shortest path problem and claims that its running time complexity is O~(mn)\tilde{O}(m\sqrt{n}), where nn is the number of vertices and mm is the number of edges. We show that his analysis is incorrect, by providing an example of a weighted graph on which the running time of his algorithm is Ω(mn)\Omega(mn).

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2508.04872,
  title  = {A Refutation of Elmasry's $\tilde{O}(m \sqrt{n})$-Time Algorithm for Single-Source Shortest Paths},
  author = {Sunny Atalig and Marek Chrobak},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2508.04872},
  year   = {2025}
}
R2 v1 2026-07-01T04:38:08.375Z