Improving ADMMs for solving doubly nonnegative programs through dual factorization

Alternating direction methods of multipliers (ADMMs) are popular approaches to handle large scale semidefinite programs that gained attention during the past decade. In this paper, we focus on solving doubly nonnegative programs (DNN), which are semidefinite programs where the elements of the matrix variable are constrained to be nonnegative. Starting from two algorithms already proposed in the literature on conic programming, we introduce two new ADMMs by employing a factorization of the dual variable. It is well known that first order methods are not suitable to compute high precision optimal solutions, however an optimal solution of moderate precision often suffices to get high quality lower bounds on the primal optimal objective function value. We present methods to obtain such bounds by either perturbing the dual objective function value or by constructing a dual feasible solution from a dual approximate optimal solution. Both procedures can be used as a post-processing phase in our ADMMs. Numerical results for DNNs that are relaxations of the stable set problem are presented. They show the impact of using the factorization of the dual variable in order to improve the progress towards the optimal solution within an iteration of the ADMM. This decreases the number of iterations as well as the CPU time to solve the DNN to a given precision. The experiments also demonstrate that within a computationally cheap post-processing, we can compute bounds that are close to the optimal value even if the DNN was solved to moderate precision only. This makes ADMMs applicable also within a branch-and-bound algorithm

A Computational Study of Exact Subgraph Based SDP Bounds for Max-Cut, Stable Set and Coloring

The "exact subgraph" approach was recently introduced as a hierarchical scheme to get increasingly tight semidefinite programming relaxations of several NP-hard graph optimization problems. Solving these relaxations is a computational challenge because of the potentially large number of violated subgraph constraints. We introduce a computational framework for these relaxations designed to cope with these difficulties. We suggest a partial Lagrangian dual, and exploit the fact that its evaluation decomposes into several independent subproblems. This opens the way to use the bundle method from non-smooth optimization to minimize the dual function. Finally computational experiments on the Max-Cut, stable set and coloring problem show the excellent quality of the bounds obtained with this approach.Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1902.0534

Improving ADMMs for Solving Doubly Nonnegative Programs through Dual Factorization

Alternating direction methods of multipliers (ADMMs) are popular approaches to handle large scale semidefinite programs that gained attention during the past decade. In this paper, we focus on solving doubly nonnegative programs (DNN), which are semidefinite programs where the elements of the matrix variable are constrained to be nonnegative. Starting from two algorithms already proposed in the literature on conic programming, we introduce two new ADMMs by employing a factorization of the dual variable. It is well known that first order methods are not suitable to compute high precision optimal solutions, however an optimal solution of moderate precision often suffices to get high quality lower bounds on the primal optimal objective function value. We present methods to obtain such bounds by either perturbing the dual objective function value or by constructing a dual feasible solution from a dual approximate optimal solution. Both procedures can be used as a post-processing phase in our ADMMs. Numerical results for DNNs that are relaxations of the stable set problem are presented. They show the impact of using the factorization of the dual variable in order to improve the progress towards the optimal solution within an iteration of the ADMM. This decreases the number of iterations as well as the CPU time to solve the DNN to a given precision. The experiments also demonstrate that within a computationally cheap post-processing, we can compute bounds that are close to the optimal value even if the DNN was solved to moderate precision only. This makes ADMMs applicable also within a branch-and-bound algorithm.Comment: 24 pages, 8 figure

On different Versions of the Exact Subgraph Hierarchy for the Stable Set Problem

Let $G$ be a graph with $n$ vertices and $m$ edges. One of several hierarchies towards the stability number of $G$ is the exact subgraph hierarchy (ESH). On the first level it computes the Lov\'{a}sz theta function $\vartheta(G)$ as semidefinite program (SDP) with a matrix variable of order $n+1$ and $n+m+1$ constraints. On the $k$-th level it adds all exact subgraph constraints (ESC) for subgraphs of order $k$ to the SDP. An ESC ensures that the submatrix of the matrix variable corresponding to the subgraph is in the correct polytope. By including only some ESCs into the SDP the ESH can be exploited computationally. In this paper we introduce a variant of the ESH that computes $\vartheta(G)$ through an SDP with a matrix variable of order $n$ and $m+1$ constraints. We show that it makes sense to include the ESCs into this SDP and introduce the compressed ESH (CESH) analogously to the ESH. Computationally the CESH seems favorable as the SDP is smaller. However, we prove that the bounds based on the ESH are always at least as good as those of the CESH. In computations sometimes they are significantly better. We also introduce scaled ESCs (SESCs), which are a more natural way to include exactness constraints into the smaller SDP and we prove that including an SESC is equivalent to including an ESC for every subgraph

Integrality and cutting planes in semidefinite programming approaches for combinatorial optimization

Many real-life decision problems are discrete in nature. To solve such problems as mathematical optimization problems, integrality constraints are commonly incorporated in the model to reflect the choice of finitely many alternatives. At the same time, it is known that semidefinite programming is very suitable for obtaining strong relaxations of combinatorial optimization problems. In this dissertation, we study the interplay between semidefinite programming and integrality, where a special focus is put on the use of cutting-plane methods. Although the notions of integrality and cutting planes are well-studied in linear programming, integer semidefinite programs (ISDPs) are considered only recently. We show that manycombinatorial optimization problems can be modeled as ISDPs. Several theoretical concepts, such as the Chvátal-Gomory closure, total dual integrality and integer Lagrangian duality, are studied for the case of integer semidefinite programming. On the practical side, we introduce an improved branch-and-cut approach for ISDPs and a cutting-plane augmented Lagrangian method for solving semidefinite programs with a large number of cutting planes. Throughout the thesis, we apply our results to a wide range of combinatorial optimization problems, among which the quadratic cycle cover problem, the quadratic traveling salesman problem and the graph partition problem. Our approaches lead to novel, strong and efficient solution strategies for these problems, with the potential to be extended to other problem classes

Integer Programming and Combinatorial Optimization [electronic resource] : 20th International Conference, IPCO 2019, Ann Arbor, MI, USA, May 22-24, 2019, Proceedings /

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Integer Programming and Combinatorial Optimization, IPCO 2019, held in Ann Arbor, MI, USA, in May 2019. The 33 full versions of extended abstracts presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 114 submissions. The conference is a forum for researchers and practitioners working on various aspects of integer programming and combinatorial optimization. The aim is to present recent developments in theory, computation, and applications in these areas.Identically Self-Blocking Clutters -- Min-Max Correlation Clustering via -- Strong Mixed-Integer Programming Formulations for Trained Neural -- Extended Formulations from Communication Protocols in Output-Efficient -- Sub-Symmetry-Breaking Inequalities for ILP with Structured Symmetry -- Intersection Cuts for Polynomial Optimization -- Fixed-Order Scheduling on Parallel Machines -- Online Submodular Maximization: Beating 1/2 Made Simple -- Improving the Integrality Gap for Multiway Cut -- nell 1-sparsity Approximation Bounds for Packing Integer Programs -- A General Framework for Handling Commitment in Online Throughput Maximization -- Lower Bounds and A New Exact Approach for the Bilevel Knapsack with Interdiction Constraints -- On Friedmann's Subexponential Lower Bound for Zadeh's Pivot Rule -- Tight Approximation Ratio for Minimum Maximal Matching -- Integer Programming and Incidence Treedepth -- A Bundle Approach for SDPs with Exact Subgraph Constraints -- Dynamic Flows with Adaptive Route Choice -- The Markovian Price of Information -- On Perturbation Spaces of Minimal Valid Functions: Inverse Semigroup Theory and Equivariant Decomposition Theorem -- On Compact Representations of Voronoi Cells of Lattices -- An Efficient Characterization of Submodular Spanning Tree Games -- The Asymmetric Traveling Salesman Path LP Has Constant Integrality Ratio -- Approximate Multi-Matroid Intersection via Iterative Refinement -- An Exact Algorithm for Robust Influence Maximization -- A New Contraction Technique with Applications to Congruency-Constrained Cuts -- Sparsity of Integer Solutions in the Average Case -- A Generic Exact Solver for Vehicle Routing and Related Problems -- Earliest Arrival Transshipments in Networks With Multiple Sinks -- Intersection Cuts for Factorable MINLP -- Linear Programming Using Limited-Precision Oracles -- Computing the Nucleolus of Weighted Cooperative Matching Games in Polynomial Time -- Breaking Symmetries to Rescue SoS: The Case of Makespan Scheduling -- Random Projections for Quadratic Programs over a Euclidean Ball.This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Integer Programming and Combinatorial Optimization, IPCO 2019, held in Ann Arbor, MI, USA, in May 2019. The 33 full versions of extended abstracts presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 114 submissions. The conference is a forum for researchers and practitioners working on various aspects of integer programming and combinatorial optimization. The aim is to present recent developments in theory, computation, and applications in these areas