Deterministic Connectivity Sketches Under Edge Deletions

How much information about a graph is needed to determine its connectivity after arbitrary valid edge deletions? This question is at the heart of designing deterministic dynamic streaming algorithms for graph connectivity. Towards answering this question, we study the deterministic one-way communication problem in which Alice holds a graph GA = (V, EA) on n vertices, Bob holds a graph GB = (V, EB) with EB ⊆ EA, and Alice sends a message M ∈ \0,1\ᵐ that allows Bob to decide whether GA - GB is connected. Randomized sketches solve this problem using O(n) bits, whereas deterministic recovery of even one surviving edge requires Ω(n²) bits. We prove an upper bound of m = O(n7/4) bits and a lower bound of m = Ω(n3/2) bits for deciding connectivity. Thus, connectivity admits a subquadratic deterministic representation despite the quadratic cost of edge recovery, but remains polynomially harder than its randomized counterpart. The upper bound immediately yields an O(n7/4)-bit deterministic n²-fault tolerant connectivity oracle, which reports the connected components of a graph G after any valid set of edge deletions. We also obtain an Ω(n f1/4)-bit lower bound for deterministic f-fault tolerant connectivity oracles for every f ∈ [1,n²]. Finally, we show that the separation between connectivity and edge recovery persists in deterministic single-pass dynamic streams with bounded update multiplicity. For every fixed ε∈ (0,1/3), our algorithm reports the connected components of the final simple graph using O(n15/8 + 3ε/8) bits (subquadratic space), provided each edge undergoes at most n^ε insertion or deletion updates in total.