English

Hierarchical threshold structure in Max-Cut with geometric edge weights

Combinatorics 2026-03-11 v1 Discrete Mathematics Optimization and Control

Abstract

We study a family of weighted Max-Cut instances on the complete graph KnK_n in which edge weights decrease geometrically in lexicographic order: the ii-th edge has weight rNir^{N-i} where N=(n2)N=\binom{n}{2}. For r2r\ge 2, the lexicographically first cut is optimal; for r=1r=1, all edges have equal weight and the balanced partition wins. In this paper we study the intermediate regime 1<r<21< r <2. The geometric weighting makes early edges dominant and singles out the kk-isolated cuts Ck={1,,k}{k+1,,n}C_k=\{1,\dots,k\}\mid\{k+1,\dots,n\} as natural candidates for optimality. For each nn and kn/21k\le\lfloor n/2\rfloor-1, we define threshold polynomials Pn,k(r)P^{n,k}(r) whose unique roots rk(n)(1,2)r_k(n)\in(1,2) determine when CkC_k and Ck+1C_{k+1} exchange dominance. We prove that, for fixed nn, these thresholds are strictly decreasing in kk and that rk(n)1r_k(n)\to 1 as nn\to\infty. As our main result, we show that for r(rk(n),rk1(n))r\in(r_k(n),r_{k-1}(n)) the cut CkC_k achieves maximum weight among all isolated cuts, yielding a sharp phase diagram for the isolated-cut family. We conjecture that isolated cuts are globally optimal among all 2n12^{n-1} cuts when n7n\ge 7; all counterexamples for small nn are characterized completely, and extensive computations for n100n\le 100 support the conjecture.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2603.08876,
  title  = {Hierarchical threshold structure in Max-Cut with geometric edge weights},
  author = {Nevena Marić},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2603.08876},
  year   = {2026}
}
R2 v1 2026-07-01T11:11:06.064Z