An Improved Algorithm for Incremental Cycle Detection and Topological Ordering in Sparse Graphs

Abstract

We consider the problem of incremental cycle detection and topological ordering in a directed graph $G=(V,E)$ with $|V|=n$ nodes. In this setting, initially the edge-set $E$ of the graph is empty. Subsequently, at each time-step an edge gets inserted into $G$. After every edge-insertion, we have to report if the current graph contains a cycle, and as long as the graph remains acyclic, we have to maintain a topological ordering of the node-set $V$. Let $m$ be the total number of edges that get inserted into $G$. We present a randomized algorithm for this problem with $\tilde{O}(m^{4/3})$ total expected update time.