The document discusses AVL trees, a type of self-balancing binary search tree invented by Adelson-Velsky and Landis. It covers their properties, operations (such as insertion and deletion), and the various rotations required to maintain balance, emphasizing their efficiency with a time complexity of O(log n) compared to traditional binary search trees which operate at O(n). AVL trees are noted for being faster due to their stricter balancing compared to red-black trees.