19 research outputs found
A Note on Non-Degenerate Integer Programs with Small Sub-Determinants
The intention of this note is two-fold. First, we study integer optimization
problems in standard form defined by and present
an algorithm to solve such problems in polynomial-time provided that both the
largest absolute value of an entry in and are constant. Then, this is
applied to solve integer programs in inequality form in polynomial-time, where
the absolute values of all maximal sub-determinants of lie between and
a constant
Finding Short Paths on Polytopes by the Shadow Vertex Algorithm
We show that the shadow vertex algorithm can be used to compute a short path
between a given pair of vertices of a polytope P = {x : Ax \leq b} along the
edges of P, where A \in R^{m \times n} is a real-valued matrix. Both, the
length of the path and the running time of the algorithm, are polynomial in m,
n, and a parameter 1/delta that is a measure for the flatness of the vertices
of P. For integer matrices A \in Z^{m \times n} we show a connection between
delta and the largest absolute value Delta of any sub-determinant of A,
yielding a bound of O(Delta^4 m n^4) for the length of the computed path. This
bound is expressed in the same parameter Delta as the recent non-constructive
bound of O(Delta^2 n^4 \log (n Delta)) by Bonifas et al.
For the special case of totally unimodular matrices, the length of the
computed path simplifies to O(m n^4), which significantly improves the
previously best known constructive bound of O(m^{16} n^3 \log^3(mn)) by Dyer
and Frieze
Combinatorics and Geometry of Transportation Polytopes: An Update
A transportation polytope consists of all multidimensional arrays or tables
of non-negative real numbers that satisfy certain sum conditions on subsets of
the entries. They arise naturally in optimization and statistics, and also have
interest for discrete mathematics because permutation matrices, latin squares,
and magic squares appear naturally as lattice points of these polytopes.
In this paper we survey advances on the understanding of the combinatorics
and geometry of these polyhedra and include some recent unpublished results on
the diameter of graphs of these polytopes. In particular, this is a thirty-year
update on the status of a list of open questions last visited in the 1984 book
by Yemelichev, Kovalev and Kravtsov and the 1986 survey paper of Vlach.Comment: 35 pages, 13 figure
Recent progress on the combinatorial diameter of polytopes and simplicial complexes
The Hirsch conjecture, posed in 1957, stated that the graph of a
-dimensional polytope or polyhedron with facets cannot have diameter
greater than . The conjecture itself has been disproved, but what we
know about the underlying question is quite scarce. Most notably, no polynomial
upper bound is known for the diameters that were conjectured to be linear. In
contrast, no polyhedron violating the conjecture by more than 25% is known.
This paper reviews several recent attempts and progress on the question. Some
work in the world of polyhedra or (more often) bounded polytopes, but some try
to shed light on the question by generalizing it to simplicial complexes. In
particular, we include here our recent and previously unpublished proof that
the maximum diameter of arbitrary simplicial complexes is in and
we summarize the main ideas in the polymath 3 project, a web-based collective
effort trying to prove an upper bound of type nd for the diameters of polyhedra
and of more general objects (including, e. g., simplicial manifolds).Comment: 34 pages. This paper supersedes one cited as "On the maximum diameter
of simplicial complexes and abstractions of them, in preparation