Local Important Separators with Applications to Unbreakable Decomposition and Multicut

Abstract

We present the first local FPT algorithm for finding important separators: Given an undirected graph $G$ with $n$ vertices and $m$ edges, vertices $s,t$ and parameters $k$ and $ν$, we can enumerate all $s$-$t$ important separators of size at most $k$ and volume at most $ν$ in time $\tilde{O}(ν2^{O(k)})$. Known approaches spend either $Ω(m)$ time (not local) or $ν^{Ω(k)}$ time (not FPT). Using this local algorithm, we show the following applications. (1) The first is an improved construction of unbreakable decomposition, a powerful generalization of tree decompositions. For any $k$, we can compute a $(5k,k)$-unbreakable decomposition with adhesion $4k$ in $\tilde{O}(k^{O(k)}m)$ time. This strictly subsumes the result of Anand, Lee, Li, Long, and Saranurak (SODA 2025) and is faster than the recent $O(k^{O(k^2)}m)$-time algorithm by Korhonen (STOC 2025) when $k = ω\Bigl(\sqrt{\frac{\log \log n}{\log \log \log n}}\Bigr)$. Our algorithm is also simpler than that of Korhonen (STOC 2025). (2) We give a near-linear time algorithm for single-sink important separators. For any sink $t$, we can list all $v$-$t$ important separators of size at most $k$ across all $v \in V(G)$ in time $\tilde{O}(2^{O(k)}m)$. Known approaches trivially compute $v$-$t$ important separators for each $v$, taking $Ω(4^k k mn)$ time. (3) Using the above result on single-sink important separators, we speed up undirected shadow removal and give the first almost-linear time FPT algorithm for Edge Multicut.