A Characterization of Irreducible Infeasible Subsystems in Flow Networks

Infeasible network flow problems with supplies and demands can be characterized via violated cut-inequalities of the classical Gale-Hoffman theorem. Written as a linear program, irreducible infeasible subsystems (IISs) provide a different means of infeasibility characterization. In this article, we answer a question left open in the literature, by showing a one-to-one correspondence between IISs and … Read more

Validation of Nominations in Gas Network Optimization: Models, Methods, and Solutions

In this article we investigate methods to solve a fundamental task in gas transportation, namely the validation of nomination problem: Given a gas transmission network consisting of passive pipelines and active, controllable elements and given an amount of gas at every entry and exit point of the network, find operational settings for all active elements … Read more

Solving Basis Pursuit: Heuristic Optimality Check and Solver Comparison

The problem of finding a minimum l^1-norm solution to an underdetermined linear system is an important problem in compressed sensing, where it is also known as basis pursuit. We propose a heuristic optimality check as a general tool for l^1-minimization, which often allows for early termination by “guessing” a primal-dual optimal pair based on an … Read more

An Infeasible-Point Subgradient Method Using Adaptive Approximate Projections

We propose a new subgradient method for the minimization of convex functions over a convex set. Common subgradient algorithms require an exact projection onto the feasible region in every iteration, which can be efficient only for problems that admit a fast projection. In our method we use inexact adaptive projections requiring to move within a … Read more

Branch-Cut-and-Propagate for the Maximum k-Colorable Subgraph Problem with Symmetry

Given an undirected graph and a positive integer k, the maximum k-colorable subgraph problem consists of selecting a k-colorable induced subgraph of maximum cardinality. The natural integer programming formulation for this problem exhibits two kinds of symmetry: arbitrarily permuting the color classes and/or applying a non-trivial graph automorphism gives equivalent solutions. It is well known … Read more

The Maximum k-Colorable Subgraph Problem and Orbitopes

Given an undirected node-weighted graph and a positive integer k, the maximum k-colorable subgraph probem is to select a k-colorable induced subgraph of largest weight. The natural integer programming formulation for this problem exhibits a high degree of symmetry which arises by permuting the color classes. It is well known that such symmetry has negative … Read more

Orbitopal Fixing

The topic of this paper are integer programming models in which a subset of 0/1-variables encode a partitioning of a set of objects into disjoint subsets. Such models can be surprisingly hard to solve by branch-and-cut algorithms if the permutation of the subsets of the partition is irrelevant. This kind of symmetry unnecessarily blows up … Read more

Packing and Partitioning Orbitopes

We introduce orbitopes as the convex hulls of 0/1-matrices that are lexicographically maximal sub ject to a group acting on the columns. Special cases are packing and partitioning orbitopes, which arise from restrictions to matrices with at most or exactly one 1-entry in each row, respectively. The goal of investigating these polytopes is to gain … Read more