A data structure for dynamic trees

We propose a data structure to maintain a collection of vertex-disjoint trees under a sequence of two kinds of operations: a link operation that combines two trees into one by adding an edge, and a cut operation that divides one tree into two by deleting an edge. Our data structure requires 0(log n) time per operation when the time is amortized over a sequence of operations. Using our data structure, we obtain new fast algorithms for the following problems: (1) Computing deepest common ancestors. (2) Solving various network flow problems including finding maximum flows, blocking flows, and acyclic flows. (3) Computing certain kinds of constrained minimum spanning trees. (4) Implementing the network simplex algorithm for the transshipment problem. Our most significant application is (2); we obtain an 0(mn log n)-time algorithm to find a maximum flow in a network of n vertices and m edges, beating by a factor of log n the fastest algorithm previously known for sparse graphs.