Finding even cycles faster via capped k-walks

Finding cycles in graphs is a fundamental problem in algorithmic graph theory. In this paper, we consider the problem of finding and reporting a cycle of length 2k in an undirected graph G with n nodes and m edges for constant k≥ 2. A classic result by Bondy and Simonovits [J. Combinatorial Theory, 1974] implies that if m ≥ 100k n1+1/k, then G contains a 2k-cycle, further implying that one needs to consider only graphs with m = O(n1+1/k). Previously the best known algorithms were an O(n2) algorithm due to Yuster and Zwick [J. Discrete Math 1997] as well as a O(m2-(1+⌈ k/2 ⌉-1)/(k+1)) algorithm by Alon et. al. [Algorithmica 1997]. We present an algorithm that uses O( m2k/(k+1) ) time and finds a 2k-cycle if one exists. This bound is O(n2) exactly when m = Θ(n1+1/k). When finding 4-cycles our new bound coincides with Alon et. al., while for every k>2 our new bound yields a polynomial improvement in m. Yuster and Zwick noted that it is "plausible to conjecture that O(n2) is the best possible bound in terms of n". We show "conditional optimality": if this hypothesis holds then our O(m2k/(k+1)) algorithm is tight as well. Furthermore, a folklore reduction implies that no combinatorial algorithm can determine if a graph contains a 6-cycle in time O(m3/2-ε) for any ε>0 unless boolean matrix multiplication can be solved combinatorially in time O(n3-ε′) for some ε′ > 0, which is widely believed to be false. Coupled with our main result, this gives tight bounds for finding 6-cycles combinatorially and also separates the complexity of finding 4- and 6-cycles giving evidence that the exponent of m in the running time should indeed increase with k. The key ingredient in our algorithm is a new notion of capped k-walks, which are walks of length k that visit only nodes according to a fixed ordering. Our main technical contribution is an involved analysis proving several properties of such walks which may be of independent interest.