A Near-Optimal Parallel Algorithm for Finding Matroid Bases (opens in new tab)

We settle the classic question of the parallel complexity of computing a matroid basis, as first posed in the seminal work of Karp, Upfal, and Wigderson (FOCS 1985, JCSS 1988). Our algorithm runs in $O(n^{1/3}\log^{1/3}n)$ rounds, matching the lower bound of KUW up to a $\log^{2/3}(n)$ factor.