## Matroid Optimisation Problems with Nested Non-linear Monomials in the Objective Function

Recently, Buchheim and Klein suggested to study polynomial-time solvable optimisation problems with linear objective functions combined with exactly one additional quadratic monomial. They concentrated on special quadratic spanning tree or forest problems. We extend their results to general matroid optimisation problems with a set of nested monomials in the objective function. The monomials are linearised … Read more

## The central curve in linear programming

The central curve of a linear program is an algebraic curve specified by linear and quadratic constraints arising from complementary slackness. It is the union of the various central paths for minimizing or maximizing the cost function over any region in the associated hyperplane arrangement. We determine the degree, arithmetic genus and defining prime ideal … 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

## Maximizing Non-monotone Submodular Functions under Matroid and Knapsack Constraints

Submodular function maximization is a central problem in combinatorial optimization, generalizing many important problems including Max Cut in directed/undirected graphs and in hypergraphs, certain constraint satisfaction problems, maximum entropy sampling, and maximum facility location problems. Unlike submodular minimization, submodular maximization is NP-hard. In this paper, we give the first constant-factor approximation algorithm for maximizing any … Read more

## On Newton(like) inequalities for multivariate homogeneous polynomials

Let $p(x_1,…,x_m) = \sum_{r_1 + \cdots + r_m = n} a_{r_1,…,r_m} \prod_{1 \leq i \leq m } x_i^{r_{i}}$ be a homogeneous polynomial of degree $n$ in $m$ variables. We call such polynomial {\bf H-Stable} if $p(z_1,…,z_m) \neq 0$ provided that the real parts $Re(z_i) > 0: 1 \leq i \leq m$. It can be assumed … Read more

## Nonlinear Matroid Optimization and Experimental Design

We study the problem of optimizing nonlinear objective functions over matroids presented by oracles or explicitly. Such functions can be interpreted as the balancing of multi-criteria optimization. We provide a combinatorial polynomial time algorithm for arbitrary oracle-presented matroids, that makes repeated use of matroid intersection, and an algebraic algorithm for vectorial matroids. Our work is … Read more