Approximation Algorithms from Inexact Solutions to Semidefinite Programming Relaxations of Combinatorial Optimization Problems

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Authors:

Timothy Lee
(email)
WPA Research, Washington, DC 20003, USA.

John E. Mitchell
(email)
Department of Mathematical Sciences, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York 12180-3590, U.S.A.

Online first, May 13 2016, in Discrete Optimization.

The work of Lee was supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Number DMS--0636358. The work of Mitchell was supported by the Air Force Office of Sponsored Research under grant FA9550-11-1-0260 and by the National Science Foundation under Grant Number CMMI--1334327. This support is both acknowledged and appreciated.

Abstract:

Semidefinite relaxations of certain combinatorial optimization problems lead to approximation algorithms with performance guarantees. For large-scale problems, it may not be computationally feasible to solve the semidefinite relaxations to optimality. In this paper, we investigate the effect on the performance guarantees of an approximate solution to the semidefinite relaxation for MAXCUT, MAX2SAT, and MAX3SAT. We show that it is possible to make simple modifications to the approximate solutions and obtain performance guarantees that depend linearly on the most negative eigenvalue of the approximate solution, the size of the problem, and the duality gap. In every case, we recover the original performance guarantees in the limit as the solution approaches the optimal solution to the semidefinite relaxation.
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