Spanning trees:
-- prove the density bound
-- fix proof of the local contraction alg
- cite Eisner's tutorial \cite{eisner:tutorial}
- \cite{pettie:onlineverify} online lower bound
- mention Steiner trees
are minors of the graph~$G$ given as the input.
For the choice $t=4\varrho$, the Lemma on low-degree vertices (\ref{lowdeg})
-guarantees that at least $n_i/2$ edges get selected in the $i$-th iteration.
-Hence at least a half of the vertices participates in contractions, so
-$n_i\le 3/4\cdot n_{i-1}$. Therefore $n_i\le n\cdot (3/4)^i$ and the algorithm terminates
-after $\O(\log n)$ iterations.
+guarantees that at the beginning of the $i$-th iteration, at least $n_i/2$ vertices
+have degree at most~$t$. Each selected edge removes one such vertex and
+possibly increases the degree of another, so at least $n_i/4$ edges get selected.
+Hence $n_i\le 3/4\cdot n_{i-1}$ and therefore $n_i\le n\cdot (3/4)^i$ and the
+algorithm terminates after $\O(\log n)$ iterations.
Each selected edge belongs to $\mst(G)$, because it is the lightest edge of
the trivial cut $\delta(v)$ (see the Blue Rule in \ref{rbma}).