Universal Optimality of Dijkstra via Beyond-Worst-Case Heaps

This paper proves that Dijkstra's shortest-path algorithm is universally optimal in both its running time and number of comparisons when combined with a sufficiently efficient heap data structure. Universal optimality is a powerful beyond-worst-case performance guarantee for graph algorithms that informally states that a single algorithm performs as well as possible for every single graph topology. We give the first application of this notion to any sequential algorithm. We design a new heap data structure with a working-set property guaranteeing that the heap takes advantage of locality in heap operations. Our heap matches the optimal (worst-case) bounds of Fibonacci heaps but also provides the beyond-worst-case guarantee that the cost of extracting the minimum element is merely logarithmic in the number of elements inserted after it instead of logarithmic in the number of all elements in the heap. This makes the extraction of recently added elements cheaper. We prove that our working-set property is sufficient to guarantee universal optimality, specifically, for the problem of ordering vertices by their distance from the source vertex: The locality in the sequence of heap operations generated by any run of Dijkstra's algorithm on a fixed topology is strong enough that one can couple the number of comparisons performed by any heap with our working-set property to the minimum number of comparisons required to solve the distance ordering problem on this topology.