Semidefinite Relaxations of Ordering Problems

Ordering problems assign weights to each ordering and ask to find an ordering of maximum weight. We consider problems where the cost function is either linear or quadratic. In the first case, there is a given profit if the element u is before v in the ordering. In the second case, the profit depends on … Read more

Quadratic factorization heuristics for copositive programming

Copositive optimization problems are particular conic programs: extremize linear forms over the copositive cone subject to linear constraints. Every quadratic program with linear constraints can be formulated as a copositive program, even if some of the variables are binary. So this is an NP-hard problem class. While most methods try to approximate the copositive cone … Read more

Copositive programming motivated bounds on the stability and the chromatic numbers

The Lovász theta number of a graph G can be viewed as a semidefinite programming relaxation of the stability number of G. It has recently been shown that a copositive strengthening of this semidefinite program in fact equals the stability number of G. We introduce a related strengthening of the Lovász theta number toward the … Read more

Regularization methods for semidefinite programming

This paper studies an alternative technique to interior point methods and nonlinear methods for semidefinite programming (SDP). The approach based on classical quadratic regularizations leads to an algorithm, generalizing a recent method called “boundary point method”. We study the theoretical properties of this algorithm and we show that in practice it behaves very well on … Read more

Solving Max-Cut to Optimality by Intersecting Semidefinite and Polyhedral Relaxations

In this paper we present a method for finding exact solutions of Max-Cut, the problem of finding a cut of maximum weight in a weighted graph. We use a Branch-and-Bound setting, that applies a dynamic version of the bundle method as bounding procedure. This approach uses Lagrangian duality to obtain a “nearly optimal” solution of … Read more

An Augmented Primal-Dual Method for Linear Conic Programs

We propose a new iterative approach for solving linear programs over convex cones. Assuming that Slaters condition is satisfied, the conic problem is transformed to the minimization of a convex differentiable function. This “agumented primal-dual function” or “apd-function” is restricted to an affine set in the primal-dual space. The evaluation of the function and its … Read more

Copositive and Semidefinite Relaxations of the Quadratic Assignment Problem

Semidefinite relaxations of the quadratic assignment problem (QAP) have recently turned out to provide good approximations to the optimal value of QAP. We take a systematic look at various conic relaxations of QAP. We first show that QAP can equivalently be formulated as a linear program over the cone of completely positive matrices. Since it … Read more

Copositive programming motivated bounds on the stability and the chromatic number

The Lovasz theta number of a graph G can be viewed as a semidefinite programming relaxation of the stability number of G. It has recently been shown that a copositive strengthening of this semidefinite program in fact equals the stability number of G. We introduce a related strengthening of the Lovasz theta number toward the … Read more

A copositive programming approach to graph partitioning

We consider 3-partitioning the vertices of a graph into sets $S_1, S_2$ and $S_3$ of specified cardinalities, such that the total weight of all edges joining $S_1$ and $S_2$ is minimized. This problem is closely related to several NP-hard problems like determining the bandwidth or finding a vertex separator in a graph. We show that … Read more

A semidefinite programming based heuristic for graph coloring

The Lovasz theta function is a well-known polynomial lower bound on the chromatic number. . Any near optimal solution of its semidefinite programming formulation carries valuable information on how to color the graph. A self-contained presentation of the role of this formulation in obtaining heuristics for the graph coloring problem is presented. Citation Submitted to … Read more