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Combinatorial n-fold integer programming and applications
Citation Link: https://doi.org/10.15480/882.2618
Publikationstyp
Conference Paper
Date Issued
2017-09-01
Sprache
English
Author(s)
TORE-DOI
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First published in
Number in series
87
Article Number
54
Citation
25th European Symposium on Algorithms (ESA 2017)
Contribution to Conference
Publisher DOI
Publisher
Schloss Dagstuhl - Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik GmbH, Dagstuhl Publishing
Many fundamental NP-hard problems can be formulated as integer linear programs (ILPs). A famous algorithm by Lenstra allows to solve ILPs in time that is exponential only in the dimension of the program. That algorithm therefore became a ubiquitous tool in the design of fixed-parameter algorithms for NP-hard problems, where one wishes to isolate the hardness of a problem by some parameter. However, it was discovered that in many cases using Lenstra's algorithm has two drawbacks: First, the run time of the resulting algorithms is often doublyexponential in the parameter, and second, an ILP formulation in small dimension can not easily express problems which involve many different costs. Inspired by the work of Hemmecke, Onn and Romanchuk [Math. Prog. 2013], we develop a single-exponential algorithm for so-called combinatorial n-fold integer programs, which are remarkably similar to prior ILP formulations for various problems, but unlike them, also allow variable dimension. We then apply our algorithm to a few representative problems like Closest String, Swap Bribery, Weighted Set Multicover, and obtain exponential speedups in the dependence on the respective parameters, the input size, or both. Unlike Lenstra's algorithm, which is essentially a bounded search tree algorithm, our result uses the technique of augmenting steps. At its heart is a deep result stating that in combinatorial n-fold IPs an existence of an augmenting step implies an existence of a "local" augmenting step, which can be found using dynamic programming. Our results provide an important insight into many problems by showing that they exhibit this phenomenon, and highlights the importance of augmentation techniques.
Subjects
Closest strings
Fixed-parameter algorithms
Integer programming
DDC Class
004: Informatik
More Funding Information
D.K. supported by the CE-ITI grant project P202/12/G061 of GA CR; M.K. supported by the GA UK grant project 1784214. M.M. supported by ERC Starting Grant 305465 (BeyondWorstCase).
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