Faster Cut-Equivalent Trees in Simple Graphs

Let $G = (V, E)$ be an undirected connected simple graph on $n$ vertices. A cut-equivalent tree of $G$ is an edge-weighted tree on the same vertex set $V$, such that for any pair of vertices $s, t\in V$, the minimum $(s, t)$-cut in the tree is also a minimum $(s, t)$-cut in $G$, and these two cuts have the same cut value. In a recent paper [Abboud, Krauthgamer and Trabelsi, 2021], the authors propose the first subcubic time algorithm for constructing a cut-equivalent tree. More specifically, their algorithm has $\widetilde{O}(n^{2.5})$ running time. In this paper, we improve the running time to $\widehat{O}(n^2)$ if almost-linear time max-flow algorithms exist. Also, using the currently fastest max-flow algorithm by [van den Brand \etal, 2021], our algorithm runs in time $\widetilde{O}(n^{17/8})$.