Connected component may refer to:
In topology and related branches of mathematics, a connected space is a topological space that cannot be represented as the union of two or more disjoint non-empty open subsets. Connectedness is one of the principal topological properties that are used to distinguish topological spaces.
A minimum spanning tree (MST) or minimum weight spanning tree is a subset of the edges of a connected, edge-weighted undirected graph that connects all the vertices together, without any cycles and with the minimum possible total edge weight. That is, it is a spanning tree whose sum of edge weights is as small as possible. More generally, any edge-weighted undirected graph has a minimum spanning forest, which is a union of the minimum spanning trees for its connected components.

In computer science, Prim's algorithm is a greedy algorithm that finds a minimum spanning tree for a weighted undirected graph. This means it finds a subset of the edges that forms a tree that includes every vertex, where the total weight of all the edges in the tree is minimized. The algorithm operates by building this tree one vertex at a time, from an arbitrary starting vertex, at each step adding the cheapest possible connection from the tree to another vertex.
In combinatorics, a branch of mathematics, a matroid is a structure that abstracts and generalizes the notion of linear independence in vector spaces. There are many equivalent ways to define a matroid axiomatically, the most significant being in terms of: independent sets; bases or circuits; rank functions; closure operators; and closed sets or flats. In the language of partially ordered sets, a finite simple matroid is equivalent to a geometric lattice.
In graph theory, a component of an undirected graph is a connected subgraph that is not part of any larger connected subgraph. The components of any graph partition its vertices into disjoint sets, and are the induced subgraphs of those sets. A graph that is itself connected has exactly one component, consisting of the whole graph. Components are sometimes called connected components.
This is a glossary of graph theory. Graph theory is the study of graphs, systems of nodes or vertices connected in pairs by lines or edges.
In graph theory, an Eulerian trail is a trail in a finite graph that visits every edge exactly once. Similarly, an Eulerian circuit or Eulerian cycle is an Eulerian trail that starts and ends on the same vertex. They were first discussed by Leonhard Euler while solving the famous Seven Bridges of Königsberg problem in 1736. The problem can be stated mathematically like this:
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 are themselves strongly connected. It is possible to test the strong connectivity of a graph, or to find its strongly connected components, in linear time (that is, Θ(V + E)).
In the mathematical theory of matroids, a graphic matroid is a matroid whose independent sets are the forests in a given finite undirected graph. The dual matroids of graphic matroids are called co-graphic matroids or bond matroids. A matroid that is both graphic and co-graphic is sometimes called a planar matroid ; these are exactly the graphic matroids formed from planar graphs.
In graph theory, a bridge, isthmus, cut-edge, or cut arc is an edge of a graph whose deletion increases the graph's number of connected components. Equivalently, an edge is a bridge if and only if it is not contained in any cycle. For a connected graph, a bridge can uniquely determine a cut. A graph is said to be bridgeless or isthmus-free if it contains no bridges.
In graph theory, a vertex subset is a vertex separator for nonadjacent vertices a and b if the removal of S from the graph separates a and b into distinct connected components.
In the mathematical discipline of graph theory, the dual graph of a planar graph G is a graph that has a vertex for each face of G. The dual graph has an edge for each pair of faces in G that are separated from each other by an edge, and a self-loop when the same face appears on both sides of an edge. Thus, each edge e of G has a corresponding dual edge, whose endpoints are the dual vertices corresponding to the faces on either side of e. The definition of the dual depends on the choice of embedding of the graph G, so it is a property of plane graphs rather than planar graphs. For planar graphs generally, there may be multiple dual graphs, depending on the choice of planar embedding of the graph.
In graph theory, the Dulmage–Mendelsohn decomposition is a partition of the vertices of a bipartite graph into subsets, with the property that two adjacent vertices belong to the same subset if and only if they are paired with each other in a perfect matching of the graph. It is named after A. L. Dulmage and Nathan Mendelsohn, who published it in 1958. A generalization to any graph is the Edmonds–Gallai decomposition, using the Blossom algorithm.
In topology, a branch of mathematics, the ends of a topological space are, roughly speaking, the connected components of the "ideal boundary" of the space. That is, each end represents a topologically distinct way to move to infinity within the space. Adding a point at each end yields a compactification of the original space, known as the end compactification.
In graph theory, a connected graph G is said to be k-vertex-connected if it has more than k vertices and remains connected whenever fewer than k vertices are removed.
In graph theory, a pseudoforest is an undirected graph in which every connected component has at most one cycle. That is, it is a system of vertices and edges connecting pairs of vertices, such that no two cycles of consecutive edges share any vertex with each other, nor can any two cycles be connected to each other by a path of consecutive edges. A pseudotree is a connected pseudoforest.
Component analysis may refer to one of several topics in statistics:
In graph theory, the modular decomposition is a decomposition of a graph into subsets of vertices called modules. A module is a generalization of a connected component of a graph. Unlike connected components, however, one module can be a proper subset of another. Modules therefore lead to a recursive (hierarchical) decomposition of the graph, instead of just a partition.
In the mathematics of infinite graphs, an end of a graph represents, intuitively, a direction in which the graph extends to infinity. Ends may be formalized mathematically as equivalence classes of infinite paths, as havens describing strategies for pursuit–evasion games on the graph, or as topological ends of topological spaces associated with the graph.
In graph theory, the weak components of a directed graph partition the vertices of the graph into subsets that are totally ordered by reachability. They form the finest partition of the set of vertices that is totally ordered in this way.