Related papers: A Proof of the Boyd-Carr Conjecture
We show that, on a $2$-dimensional compact manifold, the optimal transport map in the semi-discrete random matching problem is well-approximated in the $L^2$-norm by identity plus the gradient of the solution to the Poisson problem $-\Delta…
This paper slightly improves a classical result by Gangbo and McCann (1996) about the structure of optimal transport plans for costs that are concave functions of the Euclidean distance. Since the main difficulty for proving the existence…
We study the Maximum Budgeted Allocation problem, i.e., the problem of selling a set of $m$ indivisible goods to $n$ players, each with a separate budget, such that we maximize the collected revenue. Since the natural assignment LP is known…
The traveling salesman problem (TSP) is one of the most prominent combinatorial optimization problems. Given a complete graph G = (V, E) and non-negative distances d for every edge, the TSP asks for a shortest tour through all vertices with…
We consider the problem of finding a door along a wall with a blind robot that neither knows the distance to the door nor the direction towards of the door. This problem can be solved with the well-known doubling strategy yielding an…
The $k$-opt algorithm is one of the simplest and most widely used heuristics for solving the traveling salesman problem. Starting from an arbitrary tour, the $k$-opt algorithm improves the current tour in each iteration by exchanging up to…
We show that the classical LP relaxation of the asymmetric traveling salesman path problem (ATSPP) has constant integrality ratio. If $\rho_{\text{ATSP}}$ and $\rho_{\text{ATSPP}}$ denote the integrality ratios for the asymmetric TSP and…
We design a new LP-based algorithm for the graphic $s$-$t$ path Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP), which achieves the best approximation factor of 1.5. The algorithm is based on the idea of narrow cuts due to An, Kleinberg, and Shmoys. It…
The $T$-tour problem is a natural generalization of TSP and Path TSP. Given a graph $G=(V,E)$, edge cost $c: E \to \mathbb{R}_{\ge 0}$, and an even cardinality set $T\subseteq V$, we want to compute a minimum-cost $T$-join connecting all…
In recent years, there has been much interest in phase transitions of combinatorial problems. Phase transitions have been successfully used to analyze combinatorial optimization problems, characterize their typical-case features and locate…
We describe a $\frac{4}{3}$-approximation algorithm for the traveling salesman problem in which the distances between points are induced by graph-theoretical distances in an unweighted graph. The algorithm is based on finding a minimum cost…
In the maximum asymmetric traveling salesman problem (Max ATSP) we are given a complete directed graph with nonnegative weights on the edges and we wish to compute a traveling salesman tour of maximum weight. In this paper we give a fast…
The corner polyhedron is described by minimal valid inequalities from maximal lattice-free convex sets. For the Relaxed Corner Polyhedron (RCP) with two free integer variables and any number of non-negative continuous variables, it is known…
The Matching Augmentation Problem (MAP) has recently received significant attention as an important step towards better approximation algorithms for finding cheap $2$-edge connected subgraphs. This has culminated in a…
The Steiner Forest problem is an important generalization of the Steiner Tree problem. We are given an undirected graph with nonnegative edge costs and a collection of pairs of vertices. The task is to compute a cheapest forest with the…
We prove new results for approximating the graphic TSP and some related problems. We obtain polynomial-time algorithms with improved approximation guarantees. For the graphic TSP itself, we improve the approximation ratio to 7/5. For a…
We consider the problem of searching for rays (or lines) in the half-plane. The given problem turns out to be a very natural extension of the cow-path problem that is lifted into the half-plane and the problem can also directly be motivated…
Lagrangian relaxation is a versatile mathematical technique employed to relax constraints in an optimization problem, enabling the generation of dual bounds to prove the optimality of feasible solutions and the design of efficient…
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…
Let M be an nXn symetric matrix, n, even, T, an upper bound for T_OPT, an optimal tour, sigma_T, the smaller-valued perfect matching obtained from alternate edges of T expressed as a product of 2-cycles. Applying the modified Floyd-Warshall…