Related papers: Minimum-weight double-tree shortcutting for Metric…
In this work we consider the problem of finding the minimum-weight loop cover of an undirected graph. This combinatorial optimization problem is called 2-matching and can be seen as a relaxation of the traveling salesman problem since one…
We study the problem of finding small trees. Classical network design problems are considered with the additional constraint that only a specified number $k$ of nodes are required to be connected in the solution. A prototypical example is…
The traveling salesman problem (TSP) famously asks for a shortest tour that a salesperson can take to visit a given set of cities in any order. In this paper, we ask how much faster $k \ge 2$ salespeople can visit the cities if they divide…
We consider a multistage framework introduced recently where, given a time horizon t=1,2,...,T, the input is a sequence of instances of a (static) combinatorial optimization problem I_1,I_2,...,I_T, (one for each time step), and the goal is…
We significantly improve known time bounds for solving the minimum cut problem on undirected graphs. We use a ``semi-duality'' between minimum cuts and maximum spanning tree packings combined with our previously developed random sampling…
In this paper, we consider differential approximability of the traveling salesman problem (TSP). We show that TSP is $3/4$-differential approximable, which improves the currently best known bound $3/4 -O(1/n)$ due to Escoffier and Monnot in…
We study search trees with 2-way comparisons (2WCST's), which involve separate less-than and equal-to tests in their nodes, each test having two possible outcomes, yes and no. These trees have a much subtler structure than standard search…
We investigate the problem of computing a minimum set of solutions that approximates within a specified accuracy $\epsilon$ the Pareto curve of a multiobjective optimization problem. We show that for a broad class of bi-objective problems…
De Klerk, Pasechnik, and Sotirov give a semidefinite programming constraint for the Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP) based on the matrix-tree Theorem. This constraint says that the aggregate weight of all spanning trees in a solution to a…
The Tree Augmentation Problem (TAP) is a fundamental network design problem in which we are given a tree and a set of additional edges, also called \emph{links}. The task is to find a set of links, of minimum size, whose addition to the…
With applications to many disciplines, the traveling salesman problem (TSP) is a classical computer science optimization problem with applications to industrial engineering, theoretical computer science, bioinformatics, and several other…
A well-studied continuous model of graphs considers each edge as a continuous unit-length interval of points. In the problem $\delta$-Tour defined within this model, the objective to find a shortest tour that comes within a distance of…
This article explores an approach to addressing the Close Enough Traveling Salesman Problem (CETSP). The objective is to streamline the mathematical formulation by introducing reformulations that approximate the Euclidean distances and…
We present a framework for approximating the metric TSP based on a novel use of matchings. Traditionally, matchings have been used to add edges in order to make a given graph Eulerian, whereas our approach also allows for the removal of…
We consider the {\em MST-interdiction} problem: given a multigraph $G = (V, E)$, edge weights $\{w_e\geq 0\}_{e \in E}$, interdiction costs $\{c_e\geq 0\}_{e \in E}$, and an interdiction budget $B\geq 0$, the goal is to remove a set…
We revisit the traveling salesman problem with neighborhoods (TSPN) and present the first constant-ratio approximation for disks in the plane: Given a set of $n$ disks in the plane, a TSP tour whose length is at most $O(1)$ times the…
In the Tree Augmentation Problem (TAP) the goal is to augment a tree $T$ by a minimum size edge set $F$ from a given edge set $E$ such that $T \cup F$ is $2$-edge-connected. The best approximation ratio known for TAP is $1.5$. In the more…
Let $P$ be a set of points in $\mathbb{R}^d$, and let $\alpha \ge 1$ be a real number. We define the distance between two points $p,q\in P$ as $|pq|^{\alpha}$, where $|pq|$ denotes the standard Euclidean distance between $p$ and $q$. We…
M\"omke and Svensson presented a beautiful new approach for the traveling salesman problem on a graph metric (graph-TSP), which yields a $4/3$-approximation guarantee on subcubic graphs as well as a substantial improvement over the…
Minimum Bisection denotes the NP-hard problem to partition the vertex set of a graph into two sets of equal sizes while minimizing the width of the bisection, which is defined as the number of edges between these two sets. We first consider…