Polyhedral Bounds for Forbidden-Vertices Sets and No-Good Cut Relaxations

We study the convex hull obtained after deleting prescribed vertices from the binary cube. The analysis separates three regimes according to the number of deleted vertices. When this number is fixed, both the original-space facet count and the linear extension complexity remain linear in the ambient dimension, up to constants depending only on the number … Read more

Optimal Macroitem Sequences in the Precedence Constrained Knapsack Problem

The Precedence Constrained Knapsack Problem (PCKP) asks for a maximum-profit subset of items, subject to a knapsack capacity constraint and precedence constraints encoded by a directed acyclic graph. We study the structure of optimal solutions of the Linear Programming (LP) relaxation of the natural Integer Linear Programming formulation of the PCKP. We introduce the notion … Read more

Convex Hulls of Binary Reflected Gray Code Intervals

The binary reflected Gray code orders the vertices of the unit hypercube along a Hamiltonian path in which consecutive vertices differ in exactly one coordinate. While Gray codes have been extensively studied from a combinatorial perspective, much less is known about the polyhedral structure of convex hulls of contiguous subpaths of this order. This paper … Read more

Finding Short Paths on Simple Polytopes

We prove that computing a shortest monotone path to the optimum of a linear program over a simple polytope is NP-hard, thus resolving a 2022 open question of De Loera, Kafer, and Sanit\`{a}. As a consequence, finding a shortest sequence of pivots to an optimal basis with the simplex method is NP-hard. In fact, we … Read more

On the Single-Multi-Commodity Gap: Lifting Single- to Multicommodity Flow Instances

Benchmark instances for multicommodity flow problems frequently lack the structural nuances of real-world networks or fail to maintain a rigorous mathematical relationship with their single-commodity counterparts. This paper introduces a formal meta-generation framework that addresses these limitations by lifting single-commodity minimum-cost flow instances into the multicommodity space while strictly preserving the underlying network topology, capacity … Read more

Data-driven Policies For Two-stage Stochastic Linear Programs

A stochastic program typically involves several parameters, including deterministic first-stage parameters and stochastic second-stage elements that serve as input data. These programs are re-solved whenever any input parameter changes. However, in practical applications, quick decision-making is necessary, and solving a stochastic program from scratch for every change in input data can be computationally costly. This … Read more

Folding Mixed-Integer Linear Programs and Reflection Symmetries

For mixed-integer linear programming and linear programming it is well known that symmetries can have a negative impact on the performance of branch-and-bound and linear optimization algorithms. A common strategy to handle symmetries in linear programs is to reduce the dimension of the linear program by aggregating symmetric variables and solving a linear program of … Read more

A simulation framework for Formula 1 race strategy based on pit-stop optimization

In modern Formula~1, strict regulations and highly optimized cars limit performance gains through hardware, increasing the importance of strategic decision-making. This work tackles the problem of computing a race strategy that minimizes total race time by jointly optimizing tire stints, compound selection, fuel load, and Energy Recovery System (ERS) deployment. We present a high-performance simulation … Read more

A single loop method for quadratic minmax optimization

We consider a quadratic minmax problem with coupled inner constraints and propose a method to compute a class of stationary points. To motivate the need to compute such stationary points, we first show that they are meaningful, in the sense that they can be locally optimal for our problem under suitable linear independence and second-order … Read more