Valid Inequalities for Potential-Based Network Design Including Compressors

We study the steady-state expansion problem for potential-based flow networks. Constructing a cost-minimal network that admits a flow satisfying the underlying physical laws is a central problem in the design of gas, hydrogen, water, and electricity infrastructures. The physical behavior of such networks is governed by nonlinear relations between arc flows and the potential differences … Read more

ArcLP: A Matlab implementation of an O(√nL) arc-search infeasible interior-point algorithm for linear programming

This paper presents a Matlab implementation of an arc-search infeasible interior point algorithm for linear programming (LP), which has a proven polynomial bound of O(√nL), the best among all interior-point algorithms for LP. Software architecture and major functions are discussed. Its ease of use is described by a simple example. Crucial strategies are summarized. Quality … Read more

Two Spectral Gaps: Decentralized Optimization over Intersections of Local Convex Sets

We study decentralized minimization of an average of strongly convex, smooth local objectives over an intersection of agent-private closed convex sets, where each agent knows only its own objective and its own set and agents communicate over a gossip network. We show that the complexity is controlled by a single geometric scalar, which we call … Read more

On the exponential circuit imbalance of the Ben-Tal Nemirovski approximation

Dadush et al.\ (2024) recently developed a scaling-invariant layered least squares algorithm for linear programming whose complexity depends on the optimal condition measure $\bar{\chi}_A^*$. Their work builds on Vavasis and Ye’s (1996) algorithm whose running time depends only on the constraint matrix $A$ through the condition number $\bar{\chi}_A$. Monteiro-Tsuchiya (2003) defined the optimal condition number … Read more

Implicit Primal-Dual Guarantees in Unconstrained First-Order Minimization

This work considers the design of first-order convex optimization algorithms and convergence proofs. In particular, we consider nonsmooth Lipschitz and smooth problems accessed through a subgradient or gradient oracle, respectively. For the general class of fixed-step first-order methods, prior work on Performance Estimation Problems (PEPs) has shown that structured, tight convergence proofs typically exist. Under … Read more

Enclosures and Local Lower and Upper Bound Sets in Multiobjective Optimization

One goal of multiobjective optimization is to approximate the nondominated set in the image space. One widely used approximation concept is that of enclosures. These are unions of closed boxes that cover the nondominated set. The bounds of these boxes form the lower and upper bound sets of the enclosure. The quality of an enclosure … Read more

Sparsity-Preserving Integration of Convex Curvature Information into Linear Relaxations for Quadratic Unconstrained Binary Optimization

We systematically investigate the potentials of improving the lower bound obtained with a linear relaxation of the Quadratic Unconstrained Binary Optimization problem by integrating curvature information from an accompanying quadratic convex underestimator via gradient inequalities. On the one hand, we exemplify to which extent this hybrid approach may provide a lower bound that is strictly … Read more

Convexification of mixed-integer quadratic optimization via decision diagrams

We study mixed-integer quadratic optimization (MIQO) problems with indicator variables. We propose a unified framework, based on decision diagrams, that serves both to solve the associated optimization problems and to construct ideal conic quadratic extended formulations of the closure of the convex hull of the underlying mixed-integer set. The construction applies to arbitrary quadratics and … Read more

Synthetic Population Generation and Georeferenced Household Allocation Via Iterative Proportional Fitting and Integer Programming

Georeferenced synthetic populations are essential inputs for agent-based simulations in epidemiology, transportation, and urban planning, yet existing methods for spatial allocation of households to residences lack formal optimality guarantees. We present a two-stage mathematical framework for generating such populations from publicly available census data. The first stage combines Iterative Proportional Fitting (IPF) with a mixed-integer … Read more

The Value of Human Expertise

We consider optimization applications with unknown parameters where the decision maker believes that the optimal value of the nominal problem—the optimization problem they would have solved if the true parameters were known—is unlikely to be large. This belief derives from information that humans have that is not captured in datasets, obtained from domain knowledge and … Read more