Skip to main content

Deciding Emptiness of the Gomory-Chvátal Closure is NP-Complete, Even for a Rational Polyhedron Containing No Integer Point

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Integer Programming and Combinatorial Optimization (IPCO 2016)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 9682))

Abstract

Gomory-Chvátal cuts are prominent in integer programming. The Gomory-Chvátal closure of a polyhedron is the intersection of all half spaces defined by its Gomory-Chvátal cuts. In this paper, we show that it is \(\mathcal {NP}\)-complete to decide whether the Gomory-Chvátal closure of a rational polyhedron is empty, even when this polyhedron contains no integer point. This implies that the problem of deciding whether the Gomory-Chvátal closure of a rational polyhedron P is identical to the integer hull of P is \(\mathcal {NP}\)-hard. Similar results are also proved for the \(\{-1,0,1\}\)-cuts and \(\{0,1\}\)-cuts, two special types of Gomory-Chvátal cuts with coefficients restricted in \(\{-1, 0, 1\}\) and \(\{0, 1\}\), respectively.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  1. Borosh, I., Treybig, L.B.: Bounds on positive integral solutions to linear Diophantine equations. Proc. Am. Math. Soc. 55, 299–304 (1976)

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  2. Campelo, M., Cornuéjols, G.: Stable sets, corner polyhedra and the Chvátal closure. Oper. Res. Lett. 37, 375–378 (2009)

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  3. Chvátal, V.: Edmonds polytope and a hierarchy of combinatorial problems. Discrete Math. 4, 305–337 (1973)

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  4. Conforti, M., Cornuéjols, G., Zambelli, G.: Integer Programming. Springer, Switzerland (2014)

    Book  MATH  Google Scholar 

  5. Edmonds, J.: Maximum matching and a polyhedron with 0,1-vertices. J. Res. Natl. Bur. Stan. B 69, 125–130 (1965)

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  6. Eisenbrand, F.: On the membership problem for the elementary closure of a polyhedron. Combinatorica 19, 297–300 (1999)

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  7. Garey, M.R., Johnson, D.S.: Computers and Intractability: A Guide to the Theory of NP-Completeness. W.H. Freeman, San Francisco (1979)

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  8. Gerards, A.M.H., Schrijver, A.: Matrices with the Edmonds-Johnson property. Combinatorica 6, 365–379 (1986)

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  9. Gomory, R.E.: Outline of an algorithm for integer solutions to linear programs. Bull. Am. Math. Soc. 64, 275–278 (1958)

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  10. Grötschel, M., Lovász, L., Schrijver, A.: The ellipsoid method and its consequences in combinatorial optimization. Combinatorica 1, 169–197 (1981)

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  11. Lenstra Jr., H.W.: Integer programming with a fixed number of variables. Math. Oper. Res. 8, 538–548 (1983)

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  12. Lueker, G.S.: Two NP-complete Problems in Non-negative Integer Programming. Report No. 178, Department of Computer Science, Princeton University, Princeton, N.J. (1975)

    Google Scholar 

  13. Mahajan, A., Ralphs, T.: On the complexity of selecting disjunctions in integer programming. SIAM J. Optim. 20, 2181–2198 (2010)

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  14. Padberg, M.W., Rao, M.R.: Odd minimum cut-sets and \(b\)-matchings. Math. Oper. Res. 7, 67–80 (1982)

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  15. Schrijver, A.: Combinatorial Optimization: Polyhedra and Efficiency. Springer, Berlin (2003)

    MATH  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgement

We thank Michele Conforti for pointing out to us that the problem of deciding whether \(P_I = \emptyset \) is in \(\mathcal {NP}\) \(\cap \) co-\(\mathcal {NP}\) when we know that \(P' = P_I\).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yanjun Li .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

About this paper

Cite this paper

Cornuéjols, G., Li, Y. (2016). Deciding Emptiness of the Gomory-Chvátal Closure is NP-Complete, Even for a Rational Polyhedron Containing No Integer Point. In: Louveaux, Q., Skutella, M. (eds) Integer Programming and Combinatorial Optimization. IPCO 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9682. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-33461-5_32

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-33461-5_32

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-33460-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-33461-5

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics