Transfinite Ford-Fulkerson on a finite network

DOI10.3233/COM-180082zbMATH Open1412.90027arXiv1504.04363OpenAlexW2963090429MaRDI QIDQ4628352FDOQ4628352

Authors: Spencer Backman, Tony Huynh 

Publication date: 20 March 2019

Published in: Computability (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: It is well-known that the Ford-Fulkerson algorithm for finding a maximum flow in a network need not terminate if we allow the arc capacities to take irrational values. Every non-terminating example converges to a limit flow, but this limit flow need not be a maximum flow. Hence, one may pass to the limit and begin the algorithm again. In this way, we may view the Ford-Fulkerson algorithm as a transfinite algorithm. We analyze the transfinite running-time of the Ford-Fulkerson algorithm using ordinal numbers, and prove that the worst case running-time is $omeg{a}^{Theta(|E|)}$. For the lower bound, we show that we can model the Euclidean algorithm via Ford-Fulkerson on an auxiliary network. By running this example on a pair of incommensurable numbers, we obtain a new robust non-terminating example. We then describe how to glue $k$ copies of our Euclidean example in parallel to obtain running-time $omeg{a}^k$. An upper bound of $omeg{a}^{|E|}$ is established via induction on $|E|$. We conclude by illustrating a close connection to transfinite chip-firing as previously investigated by the first author.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/1504.04363

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zbMATH Keywords

network flowsordinals

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Analysis of algorithms and problem complexity (68Q25) Deterministic network models in operations research (90B10)

Cited In (2)

• Removing null branches in a transfinite network
• Finite Termination of “Augmenting Path” Algorithms in the Presence of Irrational Problem Data

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