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Sparsest Cut


A sparsest cut of a weighted graph minimizes the ratio of the capacity crossing a cut to the demand separated by that cut. For a finite undirected graph with vertex set V, nonnegative capacities c_(ij), and nonnegative demands d_(ij) on unordered pairs of distinct vertices, the objective is

 min_(S)(sum_(i in S,j not in S)c_(ij))/(sum_(i in S,j not in S)d_(ij))

over nonempty proper subsets S with positive separated demand (Rothvoss 2016). A mincut minimizes crossing capacity alone, whereas the demand normalization here also depends on S. When every demand is 1, the problem is uniform sparsest cut.


See also

Cut, Mincut, Uniform Sparsest Cut, Weighted Graph

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References

Rothvoss, T. "Lecture Notes on the ARV Algorithm for Sparsest Cut." 4 Jul 2016. https://arxiv.org/abs/1607.00854.

Cite this as:

Weisstein, Eric W. "Sparsest Cut." From MathWorld--A Wolfram Resource. https://mathworld.wolfram.com/SparsestCut.html

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