Constructive Characterization and Recognition Algorithm for Grafts with a Connected Minimum Join

Minimum joins in a graft $(G, T)$, also known as minimum $T$-joins of a graph $G$, are said to be connected if they determine a connected subgraph of $G$. Grafts with a connected minimum join have gained interest ever since Middendorf and Pfeiffer showed that they satisfy Seymour's min-max formula for joins and $T$-cut packings; that is, in such grafts, the size of a minimum join is equal to the size of a maximum packing of $T$-cuts. In this paper, we provide a constructive characterization of grafts with a connected minimum join. We also obtain a polynomial time algorithm that decides whether a given graft has a connected minimum join and, if so, outputs one. Our algorithm has two bottlenecks; one is the time required to compute a minimum join of a graft, and the other is the time required to solve the single-source all-sink shortest path problem in a graph with conservative $\pm 1$-valued edge weights. Thus, our algorithm runs in $O(n(m + n\log n) )$ time. In the nondense case, it improves upon the time bound for this problem due to Sebő and Tannier that was introduced as an application of their results on metrics on graphs.