Balanced component cut 2026-10-07
If every graph component has at most vertices, assigning whole graph components to two sides gives an empty graph cut with the displayed bound. To prove it, maximize the smaller side's weight . If , every component on the larger side has weight at least , because moving a smaller one would improve the smaller side. There are at least such components, since their total exceeds times the permitted maximum weight. Thus , a contradiction. The proof also works for arbitrary positive weights.
Fix , , and with . A binomial random graph has one giant component of the displayed order and all other graph components are tree components of orders at most , with high probability. The expected value and variance of the isolated vertex count concentrate it around . A Cayley formula upper bound for connected sets excludes component sizes through a small fixed fraction of ; the empty-graph cut bound excludes the remaining sizes up to . An extra-edge count excludes cyclic small graph components. The expected value of the number of vertices in small nonisolated tree components is , where . The Markov inequality completes the count of vertices outside the unique large graph component.
Put and . The hypothesis implies . For the number of isolated vertices, the isolated vertices in the Erdős-Rényi model formulas give
Thus the Chebyshev inequality gives with high probability, uniformly over the specified range.
The Cayley formula supplies a spanning tree on any connected vertex set. Consequently the expected value of the number of graph components of order is bounded by
Choose a fixed with . For , with , the binomial coefficient bound gives
Here . The geometric series and a union bound therefore exclude this entire size range, since . For , an empty graph cut would be necessary. Its total probability is at most
There are consequently no graph components of orders between and , with high probability.
For each fixed , a graph component containing a graph cycle has a spanning tree and at least one extra edge. Counting that extra edge gives an expected value ; hence every small graph component is a tree component. The total number of vertices in tree components of orders satisfies
The Markov inequality gives with high probability. When , this sum is empty and . Since , the remaining vertices must lie in one graph component larger than . It is unique, and its order is . Every other graph component is a tree with at most vertices. This is the logarithmic-regime giant component mechanism: almost all missing vertices are isolated.
If some choice produced a graph with largest component of a graph smaller than , the balanced component cut result with packing parameter one would give an empty graph cut whose sides both have at least vertices. For any fixed such vertex set partition, a uniform edge of the complete graph crosses with probability
To avoid crossing in row , at least one of its offered edges must be noncrossing. The row's probability is . The rows consist of independent random variables, so at a union bound over at most vertex set partitions gives
For example, the positive integer
makes this bound at most . Therefore every choice has a component of order at least , with probability tending to one. The simultaneous giant for fixed random-edge choice estimate includes choices made after seeing the entire array; it does not assume a particular online selection rule.
Let , and . A graph cut with no crossing edges is obtained by assigning whole graph components to its two sides. Among all such assignments, maximize the smaller side's size , and write for the other side.
Suppose . Then . If a graph component on the larger side had size , moving it to the smaller side would make both and greater than . That contradicts maximality. Hence every graph component on the larger side has at least vertices. Since each has at most vertices and their total exceeds , there must be at least of them. Consequently
a contradiction. Thus , proving the required empty cut with both sides at most . This balanced component cut argument works for arbitrary positive component weights as well; it does not require divisibility of .
The Kullback-Leibler divergence of a product measure is the sum of the individual divergences, by expanding the logarithm of the likelihood ratio and taking its expected value. Put and define to be the unordered pairs lying within one group, while is the set of unordered pairs crossing between groups. Then
Thus choosing the printed to mean gives its order of the summands. If denotes the usual graph cut , their two orders must be interchanged. Each unordered edge is counted once.
The inequality gives
Since , each changed-edge divergence is at most . Summing over at most pairs gives . This is the information scale needed for Fano's inequality.