In mathematics, a dicut is a partition of the vertices of a

directed graph In mathematics, and more specifically in graph theory, a directed graph (or digraph) is a graph that is made up of a set of vertices connected by directed edges, often called arcs. Definition In formal terms, a directed graph is an ordered pa ...

into two subsets, so that each edge that has an endpoint in both subsets is directed from the first subset to the second. Each

strongly connected component In the mathematical theory of directed graphs, a graph is said to be strongly connected if every vertex is reachable from every other vertex. The strongly connected components of an arbitrary directed graph form a partition into subgraphs that a ...

of the graph must be entirely contained in one of the two subsets, so a strongly connected graph has no nontrivial dicuts. The second of the two subsets in a dicut, a subset of vertices with no edges that exit the subset, is called a closure. The

closure problem In graph theory and combinatorial optimization, a closure of a directed graph is a set of vertices ''C'', such that no edges leave ''C''. The closure problem is the task of finding the maximum-weight or minimum-weight closure in a vertex-weighted di ...

is the algorithmic problem of finding a dicut, in an edge-weighted directed graph, whose total weight is as large as possible. It can be solved in

polynomial time In computer science, the time complexity is the computational complexity that describes the amount of computer time it takes to run an algorithm. Time complexity is commonly estimated by counting the number of elementary operations performed by ...

. In

planar graph In graph theory, a planar graph is a graph that can be embedded in the plane, i.e., it can be drawn on the plane in such a way that its edges intersect only at their endpoints. In other words, it can be drawn in such a way that no edges cross ...

s, dicuts and cycles are dual concepts. The

dual graph In the mathematical discipline of graph theory, the dual graph of a plane graph is a graph that has a vertex for each face of . The dual graph has an edge for each pair of faces in that are separated from each other by an edge, and a self-loop ...

of a directed graph, embedded in the plane, is a graph with a vertex for each face of the given graph, and a dual edge between two dual vertices when the corresponding two faces are separated by an edge. Each dual edge crosses one of the original graph edges, turned by 90° clockwise. For a dicut in the given graph, the duals of the edges that cross the dicut form a directed cycle in the dual graph, and vice versa. A

dijoin In mathematics, a dijoin is a subset of the edges of a directed graph, with the property that contracting every edge in the dijoin produces a strongly connected graph. Equivalently, a dijoin is a subset of the edges that, for every dicut, inclu ...

can be defined as a set of edges that crosses all dicuts; when the edges of a dijoin are contracted, the result is a strongly connected graph.

Woodall's conjecture In the mathematics of directed graphs, Woodall's conjecture is an unproven relationship between dicuts and dijoins. It was posed by Douglas Woodall in 1976. Statement A dicut is a partition of the vertices into two subsets such that all edges tha ...

, an unsolved problem in this area, states that in any directed graph the minimum number of edges in a dicut (the unweighted minimum closure) equals the maximum number of disjoint dijoins that can be found in the graph (a packing of dijoins). A fractional weighted version of the conjecture, posed by

Jack Edmonds Jack R. Edmonds (born April 5, 1934) is an American-born and educated computer scientist and mathematician who lived and worked in Canada for much of his life. He has made fundamental contributions to the fields of combinatorial optimization, pol ...

and Rick Giles, was refuted by

Alexander Schrijver Alexander (Lex) Schrijver (born 4 May 1948 in Amsterdam) is a Dutch mathematician and computer scientist, a professor of discrete mathematics and optimization at the University of Amsterdam and a fellow at the Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica in ...

. In the other direction, the Lucchesi–Younger theorem states that the minimum size of a dijoin equals the maximum number of disjoint dicuts that can be found in a given graph.

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