Matrices of Optimal Tree-Depth and Row-Invariant Parameterized Algorithm for Integer Programming

A long line of research on fixed parameter tractability of integer programming culminated with showing that integer programs with n variables and a constraint matrix with tree-depth d and largest entry ? are solvable in time g(d,?) poly(n) for some function g, i.e., fixed parameter tractable when parameterized by tree-depth d and ?. However, the tree-depth of a constraint matrix depends on the positions of its non-zero entries and thus does not reflect its geometric structure. In particular, tree-depth of a constraint matrix is not preserved by row operations, i.e., a given integer program can be equivalent to another with a smaller dual tree-depth. We prove that the branch-depth of the matroid defined by the columns of the constraint matrix is equal to the minimum tree-depth of a row-equivalent matrix. We also design a fixed parameter algorithm parameterized by an integer d and the entry complexity of an input matrix that either outputs a matrix with the smallest dual tree-depth that is row-equivalent to the input matrix or outputs that there is no matrix with dual tree-depth at most d that is row-equivalent to the input matrix. Finally, we use these results to obtain a fixed parameter algorithm for integer programming parameterized by the branch-depth of the input constraint matrix and the entry complexity. The parameterization by branch-depth cannot be replaced by the more permissive notion of branch-width

The complexity landscape of decompositional parameters for ILP : programs with few global variables and constraints

Integer Linear Programming (ILP) has a broad range of applications in various areas of artificial intelligence. Yet in spite of recent advances, we still lack a thorough understanding of which structural restrictions make ILP tractable. Here we study ILP instances consisting of a small number of “global” variables and/or constraints such that the remaining part of the instance consists of small and otherwise independent components; this is captured in terms of a structural measure we call fracture backdoors which generalizes, for instance, the well-studied class of N-fold ILP instances. Our main contributions can be divided into three parts. First, we formally develop fracture backdoors and obtain exact and approximation algorithms for computing these. Second, we exploit these backdoors to develop several new parameterized algorithms for ILP; the performance of these algorithms will naturally scale based on the number of global variables or constraints in the instance. Finally, we complement the developed algorithms with matching lower bounds. Altogether, our results paint a near-complete complexity landscape of ILP with respect to fracture backdoors