Minor Sparsifiers and the Distributed Laplacian Paradigm

We study distributed algorithms built around minor-based vertex sparsifiers, and give the first algorithm in the CONGEST model for solving linear systems in graph Laplacian matrices to high accuracy. Our Laplacian solver has a round complexity of $O(n^{o(1)}(\sqrt{n}+D))$, and thus almost matches the lower bound of $\widetilde{\Omega}(\sqrt{n}+D)$, where $n$ is the...