8 research outputs found
Edge-Graph Diameter Bounds for Convex Polytopes with Few Facets
We show that the edge graph of a 6-dimensional polytope with 12 facets has
diameter at most 6, thus verifying the d-step conjecture of Klee and Walkup in
the case of d=6. This implies that for all pairs (d,n) with n-d \leq 6 the
diameter of the edge graph of a d-polytope with n facets is bounded by 6, which
proves the Hirsch conjecture for all n-d \leq 6. We show this result by showing
this bound for a more general structure -- so-called matroid polytopes -- by
reduction to a small number of satisfiability problems.Comment: 9 pages; update shortcut constraint discussio
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
Geometric Combinatorics of Transportation Polytopes and the Behavior of the Simplex Method
This dissertation investigates the geometric combinatorics of convex
polytopes and connections to the behavior of the simplex method for linear
programming. We focus our attention on transportation polytopes, which are sets
of all tables of non-negative real numbers satisfying certain summation
conditions. Transportation problems are, in many ways, the simplest kind of
linear programs and thus have a rich combinatorial structure. First, we give
new results on the diameters of certain classes of transportation polytopes and
their relation to the Hirsch Conjecture, which asserts that the diameter of
every -dimensional convex polytope with facets is bounded above by
. In particular, we prove a new quadratic upper bound on the diameter of
-way axial transportation polytopes defined by -marginals. We also show
that the Hirsch Conjecture holds for classical transportation
polytopes, but that there are infinitely-many Hirsch-sharp classical
transportation polytopes. Second, we present new results on subpolytopes of
transportation polytopes. We investigate, for example, a non-regular
triangulation of a subpolytope of the fourth Birkhoff polytope . This
implies the existence of non-regular triangulations of all Birkhoff polytopes
for . We also study certain classes of network flow polytopes
and prove new linear upper bounds for their diameters.Comment: PhD thesis submitted June 2010 to the University of California,
Davis. 183 pages, 49 figure