Shortest Path Problem - Definition

Definition

The shortest path problem can be defined for graphs whether undirected, directed, or mixed. It is defined here for undirected graphs; for directed graphs the definition of path requires that consecutive vertices be connected by an appropriate directed edge.

Two vertices are adjacent when they are both incident to a common edge. A path in an undirected graph is a sequence of vertices such that is adjacent to for . Such a path is called a path of length from to . (The are variables; their numbering here relates to their position in the sequence and needs not to relate to any canonical labeling of the vertices.)

Let be the edge incident to both and . Given a real-valued weight function, and an undirected (simple) graph, the shortest path from to is the path (where and ) that over all possible minimizes the sum When the graph is unweighted or, this is equivalent to finding the path with fewest edges.

The problem is also sometimes called the single-pair shortest path problem, to distinguish it from the following variations:

• The single-source shortest path problem, in which we have to find shortest paths from a source vertex v to all other vertices in the graph.
• The single-destination shortest path problem, in which we have to find shortest paths from all vertices in the directed graph to a single destination vertex v. This can be reduced to the single-source shortest path problem by reversing the arcs in the directed graph.
• The all-pairs shortest path problem, in which we have to find shortest paths between every pair of vertices v, v' in the graph.

These generalizations have significantly more efficient algorithms than the simplistic approach of running a single-pair shortest path algorithm on all relevant pairs of vertices.