Not every GTSP facet induces an STSP facet

Abstract. The graphical traveling salesman problem (GTSP) has been studied as a variant of the classical symmetric traveling salesman problem (STSP) suited particularly for sparse graphs. In addition, it can be viewed as a relaxation of the STSP and employed for solving the latter to optimality as originally proposed by Naddef and Rinaldi. There is a close natural connection between the two associated polyhedra. Until now, it was not known whether there are facets in TT-form of the GTSP polyhedron which are not facets of the STSP polytope as well. In this paper we give an affirmative answer to this question for n ≥ 9 and provide a general method for constructing such facets