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The negative cycles polyhedron and hardness of checking some polyhedral properties

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Abstract

Given a graph G=(V,E) and a weight function on the edges w:E→ℝ, we consider the polyhedron P(G,w) of negative-weight flows on G, and get a complete characterization of the vertices and extreme directions of P(G,w). Based on this characterization, and using a construction developed in Khachiyan et al. (Discrete Comput. Geom. 39(1–3):174–190, 2008), we show that, unless P=NP, there is no output polynomial-time algorithm to generate all the vertices of a 0/1-polyhedron. This strengthens the NP-hardness result of Khachiyan et al. (Discrete Comput. Geom. 39(1–3):174–190, 2008) for non 0/1-polyhedra, and comes in contrast with the polynomiality of vertex enumeration for 0/1-polytopes (Bussiech and Lübbecke in Comput. Geom., Theory Appl. 11(2):103–109, 1998). As further applications, we show that it is NP-hard to check if a given integral polyhedron is 0/1, or if a given polyhedron is half-integral. Finally, we also show that it is NP-hard to approximate the maximum support of a vertex of a polyhedron in ℝn within a factor of 12/n.

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Correspondence to Khaled Elbassioni.

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This research was partially supported by DIMACS, a collaborative project of Rutgers University, Princeton University, AT&T Labs-Research, Bell Labs, NEC Laboratories America and Telcordia Technologies, as well as affiliate members Avaya Labs, HP Labs, IBM Research, Microsoft Research, Stevens Institute of Technology, Georgia Institute of Technology and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. DIMACS was founded as an NSF Science and Technology Center.

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Boros, E., Elbassioni, K., Gurvich, V. et al. The negative cycles polyhedron and hardness of checking some polyhedral properties. Ann Oper Res 188, 63–76 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10479-010-0690-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10479-010-0690-5

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