Graph Connectivity and Single Element Recovery via Linear and OR Queries

We study the problem of finding a spanning forest in an undirected, n-vertex multi-graph under two basic query models. One are Linear queries which are linear measurements on the incidence vector induced by the edges; the other are the weaker OR queries which only reveal whether a given subset of plausible edges is empty or not. At the heart of our study lies a fundamental problem which we call the single element recovery problem: given a non-negative vector x ∈ ℝ^{N}_{≥ 0}, the objective is to return a single element x_j > 0 from the support. Queries can be made in rounds, and our goals is to understand the trade-offs between the query complexity and the rounds of adaptivity needed to solve these problems, for both deterministic and randomized algorithms. These questions have connections and ramifications to multiple areas such as sketching, streaming, graph reconstruction, and compressed sensing. Our main results are as follows: