Borůvka's algorithm

Borůvka's algorithm is a greedy algorithm for finding a minimum spanning tree in a graph, or a minimum spanning forest in the case of a graph that is not connected. It was first published in 1926 by Otakar Borůvka as a method of constructing an efficient electricity network for Moravia. The algorithm was rediscovered by Choquet in 1938; again by Florek, Łukasiewicz, Perkal, Steinhaus, and Zubrzycki in 1951; and again by Georges Sollin in 1965. This algorithm is frequently called Sollin's algorithm, especially in the parallel computing literature. The algorithm begins by finding the minimum-weight edge incident to each vertex of the graph, and adding all of those edges to the forest. Then, it repeats a similar process of finding the minimum-weight edge from each tree constructed so far to a different tree, and adding all of those edges to the forest. Each repetition of this process reduces the number of trees, within each connected component of the graph, to at most half of this former value, so after logarithmically many repetitions the process finishes. When it does, the set of edges it has added forms the minimum spanning forest. The following pseudocode illustrates a basic implementation of Borůvka's algorithm. In the conditional clauses, every edge uv is considered cheaper than "None". The purpose of the completed variable is to determine whether the forest F is yet a spanning forest. If edges do not have distinct weights, then a consistent tie-breaking rule must be used, e.g. based on some total order on vertices or edges. This can be achieved by representing vertices as integers and comparing them directly; comparing their memory addresses; etc. A tie-breaking rule is necessary to ensure that the created graph is indeed a forest, that is, it does not contain cycles. For example, consider a triangle graph with nodes {a,b,c} and all edges of weight 1. Then a cycle could be created if we select ab as the minimal weight edge for {a}, bc for {b}, and ca for {c}.

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