R: Minimum cut in a graph

min_cut {igraph} | R Documentation

## Minimum cut in a graph

### Description

`min_cut` calculates the minimum st-cut between two vertices in a graph (if the `source` and `target` arguments are given) or the minimum cut of the graph (if both `source` and `target` are `NULL`).

### Usage

    min_cut(
      graph,
      source = NULL,
      target = NULL,
      capacity = NULL,
      value.only = TRUE
    )

### Arguments

`graph` | The input graph.
`source` | The id of the source vertex.
`target` | The id of the target vertex (sometimes also called sink).
`capacity` | Vector giving the capacity of the edges. If this is `NULL` (the default) then the `capacity` edge attribute is used.
`value.only` | Logical scalar, if `TRUE` only the minimum cut value is returned, if `FALSE` the edges in the cut and a the two (or more) partitions are also returned.

### Details

The minimum st-cut between `source` and `target` is the minimum total weight of edges needed to remove to eliminate all paths from `source` to `target`.

The minimum cut of a graph is the minimum total weight of the edges needed to remove to separate the graph into (at least) two components. (Which is to make the graph not strongly connected in the directed case.)

The maximum flow between two vertices in a graph is the same as the minimum st-cut, so `max_flow` and `min_cut` essentially calculate the same quantity, the only difference is that `min_cut` can be invoked without giving the `source` and `target` arguments and then minimum of all possible minimum cuts is calculated.

For undirected graphs the Stoer-Wagner algorithm (see reference below) is used to calculate the minimum cut.

### Value

For `min_cut` a nuieric constant, the value of the minimum cut, except if `value.only = FALSE`. In this case a named list with components:

`value` | Numeric scalar, the cut value.
`cut` | Numeric vector, the edges in the cut.
`partition1` | The vertices in the first partition after the cut edges are removed. Note that these vertices might be actually in different components (after the cut edges are removed), as the graph may fall apart into more than two components.
`partition2` | The vertices in the second partition after the cut edges are removed. Note that these vertices might be actually in different components (after the cut edges are removed), as the graph may fall apart into more than two components.

### References

M. Stoer and F. Wagner: A simple min-cut algorithm, Journal of the ACM, 44 585-591, 1997.

### See Also

`max_flow` for the related maximum flow problem, `distances`, `edge_connectivity`, `vertex_connectivity`

### Examples

    g <- make_ring(100)
    min_cut(g, capacity=rep(1,vcount(g)))
    min_cut(g, value.only=FALSE, capacity=rep(1,vcount(g)))

    g2 <- graph( c(1,2,2,3,3,4, 1,6,6,5,5,4, 4,1) )
    E(g2)$capacity <- c(3,1,2, 10,1,3, 2)
    min_cut(g2, value.only=FALSE)

[Package igraph version 1.3.2 Index]