English

An enhanced formulation for solving graph coloring problems with the Douglas-Rachford algorithm

Optimization and Control 2018-08-06 v1 Combinatorics

Abstract

We study the behavior of the Douglas-Rachford algorithm on the graph vertex-coloring problem. Given a graph and a number of colors, the goal is to find a coloring of the vertices so that all adjacent vertex pairs have different colors. In spite of the combinatorial nature of this problem, the Douglas-Rachford algorithm was recently shown to be a successful heuristic for solving a wide variety of graph coloring instances, when the problem was cast as a feasibility problem on binary indicator variables. In this work we consider a different formulation, based on semidefinite programming. The much improved performance of the Douglas-Rachford algorithm, with this new approach, is demonstrated through various numerical experiments.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1808.01022,
  title  = {An enhanced formulation for solving graph coloring problems with the Douglas-Rachford algorithm},
  author = {F. J. Aragón Artacho and R. Campoy and V. Elser},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1808.01022},
  year   = {2018}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-23T03:23:20.799Z