### A polylogarithmic approximation of the minimum bisection

A bisection of a graph with n vertices is a partition of its vertices into two sets, each of size n/2. The bisection cost is the number of edges connecting the two sets. Finding the bisection of minimum cost is NP-hard. We present an algorithm that finds a bisection whose cost is within ratio of O(log/sup 2/ n) from the optimal. For graphs excluding any fixed graph as a minor (e.g. planar graphs) we obtain an improved approximation ratio of O(log n). The previously known approximation ratio for bisection was roughly /spl radic/n.

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