1,586 research outputs found
Bounds on the Complexity of Halfspace Intersections when the Bounded Faces have Small Dimension
We study the combinatorial complexity of D-dimensional polyhedra defined as
the intersection of n halfspaces, with the property that the highest dimension
of any bounded face is much smaller than D. We show that, if d is the maximum
dimension of a bounded face, then the number of vertices of the polyhedron is
O(n^d) and the total number of bounded faces of the polyhedron is O(n^d^2). For
inputs in general position the number of bounded faces is O(n^d). For any fixed
d, we show how to compute the set of all vertices, how to determine the maximum
dimension of a bounded face of the polyhedron, and how to compute the set of
bounded faces in polynomial time, by solving a polynomial number of linear
programs
Basic Polyhedral Theory
This is a chapter (planned to appear in Wiley's upcoming Encyclopedia of
Operations Research and Management Science) describing parts of the theory of
convex polyhedra that are particularly important for optimization. The topics
include polyhedral and finitely generated cones, the Weyl-Minkowski Theorem,
faces of polyhedra, projections of polyhedra, integral polyhedra, total dual
integrality, and total unimodularity.Comment: 14 page
The tropical double description method
We develop a tropical analogue of the classical double description method
allowing one to compute an internal representation (in terms of vertices) of a
polyhedron defined externally (by inequalities). The heart of the tropical
algorithm is a characterization of the extreme points of a polyhedron in terms
of a system of constraints which define it. We show that checking the
extremality of a point reduces to checking whether there is only one minimal
strongly connected component in an hypergraph. The latter problem can be solved
in almost linear time, which allows us to eliminate quickly redundant
generators. We report extensive tests (including benchmarks from an application
to static analysis) showing that the method outperforms experimentally the
previous ones by orders of magnitude. The present tools also lead to worst case
bounds which improve the ones provided by previous methods.Comment: 12 pages, prepared for the Proceedings of the Symposium on
Theoretical Aspects of Computer Science, 2010, Nancy, Franc
An update on the Hirsch conjecture
The Hirsch conjecture was posed in 1957 in a letter from Warren M. Hirsch to
George Dantzig. It states that the graph of a d-dimensional polytope with n
facets cannot have diameter greater than n - d.
Despite being one of the most fundamental, basic and old problems in polytope
theory, what we know is quite scarce. Most notably, no polynomial upper bound
is known for the diameters that are conjectured to be linear. In contrast, very
few polytopes are known where the bound is attained. This paper collects
known results and remarks both on the positive and on the negative side of the
conjecture. Some proofs are included, but only those that we hope are
accessible to a general mathematical audience without introducing too many
technicalities.Comment: 28 pages, 6 figures. Many proofs have been taken out from version 2
and put into the appendix arXiv:0912.423
- …