Keywords and Synonyms
(1 + ϵ, β)-spanners; Almost additive spanners
Problem Definition
For a pair of numbers \( { \alpha,\beta } \), \( { \alpha \ge 1 } \), \( { \beta \ge 0 } \), a subgraph \( { G^{\prime} = (V,H) } \) of an unweighted undirected graph \( { G = (V,E) } \), \( { H \subseteq E } \), is an \( { (\alpha,\beta) } \)-spanner of G if for every pair of vertices \( { u,w \in V } \), \( \text{dist}_{G^{\prime}}(u,w) \le \alpha \cdot \text{dist}_G(u,w) + \beta \), where \( { \text{dist}_G(u,w) } \) stands for the distance between u and w in G. It is desirable to show that for every n-vertex graph there exists a sparse \( { (\alpha,\beta) } \)-spanner with as small values of α and β as possible. The problem is to determine asymptotic tradeoffs between α and β on one hand, and the sparsity of the spanner on the other.
Key Results
The main result of Elkin and Peleg [6] establishes the existence and efficient constructibility of \( { (1+\epsilon,\beta) } \)-spanners of size \( {...
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Recommended Reading
Althofer, I., Das, G., Dobkin, D.P., Joseph, D., Soares, J.: On Sparse Spanners of Weighted Graphs. Discret. Comput. Geom. 9, 81–100 (1993)
Awerbuch, B.: Complexity of network synchronization. J. ACM 4, 804–823 (1985)
Baswana, S., Kavitha, T., Mehlhorn, K., Pettie, S.: New Constructions of (alpha, beta)-spanners and purely additive spanners. In: Proc. of Symp. on Discrete Algorithms, Vancouver, Jan 2005, pp. 672–681
Dor, D., Halperin, S., Zwick, U.: All Pairs Almost Shortest Paths. SIAM J. Comput. 29, 1740–1759 (2000)
Elkin, M.: Computing Almost Shortest Paths. Trans. Algorithms 1(2), 283–323 (2005)
Elkin, M., Peleg, D.: \( { (1+\epsilon, \beta) } \)-Spanner Constructions for General Graphs. SIAM J. Comput. 33(3), 608–631 (2004)
Elkin, M., Zhang, J.: Efficient Algorithms for Constructing \( { (1+\epsilon,\beta) } \)-spanners in the Distributed and Streaming Models. Distrib. Comput. 18(5), 375–385 (2006)
Peleg, D., Schäffer, A.: Graph spanners. J. Graph Theory 13, 99–116 (1989)
Pettie, S.: Low-Distortion Spanners. In: 34th International Colloquium on Automata Languages and Programm, Wroclaw, July 2007, pp. 78–89
Roditty, L., Zwick, U.: Dynamic approximate all-pairs shortest paths in undirected graphs. In: Proc. of Symp. on Foundations of Computer Science, Rome, Oct. 2004, pp. 499–508
Thorup, M., Zwick, U.: Spanners and Emulators with sublinear distance errors. In: Proc. of Symp. on Discrete Algorithms, Miami, Jan. 2006, pp. 802–809
Woodruff, D.: Lower Bounds for Additive Spanners, Emulators, and More. In: Proc. of Symp. on Foundations of Computer Science, Berckeley, Oct. 2006, pp. 389–398
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2008 Springer-Verlag
About this entry
Cite this entry
Elkin, M. (2008). Sparse Graph Spanners. In: Kao, MY. (eds) Encyclopedia of Algorithms. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-30162-4_387
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-30162-4_387
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-0-387-30770-1
Online ISBN: 978-0-387-30162-4
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceReference Module Computer Science and Engineering