Improved distributed algorithms for exact shortest paths

Abstract

Computing shortest paths is one of the central problems in the theory of distributed computing. For the last few years, substantial progress has been made on the approximate single source shortest paths problem, culminating in an algorithm of Henzinger, Krinninger, and Nanongkai [STOC’16] which deterministically computes (1+o(1))-approximate shortest paths in Õ(D+√n) time, where D is the hop-diameter of the graph. Up to logarithmic factors, this time complexity is optimal, matching the lower bound of Elkin [STOC’04].