On the Locality of Nash-Williams Forest Decomposition and Star-Forest Decomposition

Given a graph $G=(V,E)$ with arboricity $\alpha$, we study the problem of decomposing the edges of $G$ into $(1+\epsilon)\alpha$ disjoint forests in the distributed LOCAL model. Barenboim and Elkin [PODC 08] gave a LOCAL algorithm that computes a $(2+\epsilon)\alpha$-forest decomposition using $O(\frac{\log n}{\epsilon})$ rounds. Ghaffari and Su [SODA17] made further progress by computing a $(1+\epsilon) \alpha$-forest decomposition in $O(\frac{\log³ n}{\epsilon^4})$ rounds when $\epsilon \alpha = \Omega(\sqrt{\alpha \log n})$, i.e. the limit of their algorithm is an $(\alpha+ \Omega(\sqrt{\alpha \log n}))$-forest decomposition. This algorithm, based on a combinatorial construction of Alon, McDiarmid & Reed [Combinatorica `92], in fact provides a decomposition of the graph into \emph{star-forests}, i.e. each forest is a collection of stars. Our main result in this paper is to reduce the threshold of $\epsilon \alpha$ in $(1+\epsilon)\alpha$-forest decomposition and star-forest decomposition. This further answers the $10^{\text{th}}$ open question from Barenboim and Elkin's "Distributed Graph Algorithms" book. Moreover, it gives the first $(1+\epsilon)\alpha$-orientation algorithms with {\it linear dependencies} on $\epsilon^{-1}$. At a high level, our results for forest-decomposition are based on a combination of network decomposition, load balancing, and a new structural result on local augmenting sequences. Our result for star-forest decomposition uses a more careful probabilistic analysis for the construction of Alon, McDiarmid, & Reed; the bounds on star-arboricity here were not previously known, even non-constructively.