Most tensor problems are NP-hard

We show that multilinear (tensor) analogues of many efficiently computable problems in numerical linear algebra are NP-hard. Our list here includes: determining the feasibility of a system of bilinear equations, deciding whether a tensor possesses a given eigenvalue, singular value, or spectral norm; approximating an eigenvalue, eigenvector, singular vector, or spectral norm; determining a best … Read more

A simple branching scheme for Vertex Coloring Problems

We present a branching scheme for some Vertex Coloring Problems based on a new graph operator called extension. The extension operator is used to generalize the branching scheme proposed by Zykov for the basic problem to a broad class of coloring problems, such as the graph multicoloring, where each vertex requires a multiplicity of colors, … Read more

Paths, Trees and Matchings under Disjunctive Constraints

We study the minimum spanning tree problem, the maximum matching problem and the shortest path problem subject to binary disjunctive constraints: A negative disjunctive constraint states that a certain pair of edges cannot be contained simultaneously in a feasible solution. It is convenient to represent these negative disjunctive constraints in terms of a so-called conflict … Read more

Trioid: A generalization of matroid and the associated polytope

We consider a generalization of the well known greedy algorithm, called $m$-step greedy algorithm, where $m$ elements are examined in each iteration. When $m=1$ or $2$, the algorithm reduces to the standard greedy algorithm. For $m=3$ we provide a complete characterization of the independence system, called trioid, where the $m$-step greedy algorithm guarantees an optimal … Read more

Graph Realizations Associated with Minimizing the Maximum Eigenvalue of the Laplacian

In analogy to the absolute algebraic connectivity of Fiedler, we study the problem of minimizing the maximum eigenvalue of the Laplacian of a graph by redistributing the edge weights. Via semidefinite duality this leads to a graph realization problem in which nodes should be placed as close as possible to the origin while adjacent nodes … Read more

Minimal Spanning Trees with Conflict Graphs

For the classical minimum spanning tree problem we introduce disjunctive constraints for pairs of edges which can not be both included in the spanning tree at the same time. These constraints are represented by a conflict graph whose vertices correspond to the edges of the original graph. Edges in the conflict graph connect conflicting edges … Read more

Efficient high-precision dense matrix algebra on parallel architectures for nonlinear discrete optimization

We provide a proof point for the idea that matrix-based algorithms for discrete optimization problems, mainly conceived for proving theoretical efficiency, can be easily and efficiently implemented on massively-parallel architectures by exploiting scalable and efficient parallel implementations of algorithms for ultra high-precision dense linear algebra. We have successfully implemented our algorithm on the Blue Gene/L … Read more

The Rotational Dimension of a Graph

Given a connected graph $G=(N,E)$ with node weights $s\in\R^N_+$ and nonnegative edge lengths, we study the following embedding problem related to an eigenvalue optimization problem over the second smallest eigenvalue of the (scaled) Laplacian of $G$: Find $v_i\in\R^{|N|}$, $i\in N$ so that distances between adjacent nodes do not exceed prescribed edge lengths, the weighted barycenter … Read more