Tarjan's Algorithm (named for its discoverer, Robert Tarjan) is a graph theory algorithm for finding the strongly connected components of a graph. It can be seen as an improved version of Kosaraju's algorithm, and is comparable in efficiency to Gabow's algorithm.
Idea
The basic idea of the algorithm is this: a depth-first search begins from a start node. The strongly connected components form the subtrees of the search tree, the roots of which are the roots of the strongly connected components.
The nodes are placed on a stack in the order in which they are visited. When the search returns from a subtree, the nodes are taken from the stack and it is determined whether each node is the root of a strongly connected component. If a node is the root of a strongly connected component, then it and all of the nodes taken off before it form that strongly connected component.
The root property
The crux of the algorithm comes in determining whether a node is the root of a strongly connected component. To do this, each node is given a depth search index v.index, which numbers the nodes consecutively in the order in which they are discovered. In addition, each node is assigned a value v.lowlink that satisfies v.lowlink := min {v'.index: v' is reachable from v}. Therefore v is the root of a strongly connected component if and only if v.lowlink = v.index. The value v.lowlink is computed during the depth first search such that it is always known when needed.
The algorithm in pseudocode
Input: Graph G = (V, E), Start node v0
index = 0 // DFS node number counter
S = empty // An empty stack of nodes
tarjan(v0) // Start a DFS at the start node
procedure tarjan(v)
v.index = index // Set the depth index for v
v.lowlink = index
index = index + 1
S.push(v) // Push v on the stack
forall (v, v') in E do // Consider successors of v
if (v'.index is undefined) // Was successor v' visited?
tarjan(v') // Recurse
v.lowlink = min(v.lowlink, v'.lowlink)
elseif (v' in S) // Is v' on the stack?
v.lowlink = min(v.lowlink, v'.lowlink)
if (v.lowlink == v.index) // Is v the root of an SCC?
print "SCC:"
repeat
v' = S.pop
print v'
until (v' == v)
Remarks
- Complexity: The tarjan procedure is called once for each node; the forall statement considers each edge at most twice. The algorithm's running time is therefore linear in the number of edges in G (O(|V|+|E|)).
- The test for whether v' is on the stack should be done in constant time, for example, by testing a flag stored on each node that indicates whether it is on the stack.
- The algorithm can only find those strongly connected components that are reachable from the start node. This can be overcome by starting the algorithm several times from different start nodes.
Literature
- Robert Tarjan: Depth-first search and linear graph algorithms. In: SIAM Journal on Computing. Vol. 1 (1972), No. 2, P. 146-160.