The max-cut problem is a classical graph theory problem which is NP-complete. The best polynomial time approximation scheme relies on emph{semidefinite programming} (SDP). We study the conditions under which graphs of certain classes have rank~1 solutions to the max-cut SDP. We apply these findings to look at how solutions to the max-cut SDP behave under simple combinatorial constructions. Our results determine when solutions to the max-cut SDP for cycle graphs are rank~1. We find the solutions to the max-cut SDP of the vertex~sum of two graphs. We then characterize the SDP solutions upon joining two triangle graphs by an edge~sum.
We consider the Max-Cut problem. Let $G = (V,E)$ be a graph with adjacency matrix $(a_{ij})_{i,j=1}^{n}$. Burer, Monteiro & Zhang proposed to find, for $n$ angles $left{theta_1, theta_2, dots, theta_nright} subset [0, 2pi]$, minima of the energy $$ f(theta_1, dots, theta_n) = sum_{i,j=1}^{n} a_{ij} cos{(theta_i - theta_j)}$$ because configurations achieving a global minimum leads to a partition of size 0.878 Max-Cut(G). This approach is known to be computationally viable and leads to very good results in practice. We prove that by replacing $cos{(theta_i - theta_j)}$ with an explicit function $g_{varepsilon}(theta_i - theta_j)$ global minima of this new functional lead to a $(1-varepsilon)$Max-Cut(G). This suggests some interesting algorithms that perform well. It also shows that the problem of finding approximate global minima of energy functionals of this type is NP-hard in general.
We show that the linear or quadratic 0/1 program[P:quadmin{ c^Tx+x^TFx : :A,x =b;:xin{0,1}^n},]can be formulated as a MAX-CUT problem whose associated graph is simply related to the matrices $F$ and $A^TA$.Hence the whole arsenal of approximation techniques for MAX-CUT can be applied. We also compare the lower boundof the resulting semidefinite (or Shor) relaxation with that of the standard LP-relaxation and the first semidefinite relaxationsassociated with the Lasserre hierarchy and the copositive formulations of $P$.
The Potts model has many applications. It is equivalent to some min-cut and max-flow models. Primal-dual algorithms have been used to solve these problems. Due to the special structure of the models, convergence proof is still a difficult problem. In this work, we developed two novel, preconditioned, and over-relaxed alternating direction methods of multipliers (ADMM) with convergence guarantee for these models. Using the proposed preconditioners or block preconditioners, we get accelerations with the over-relaxation variants of preconditioned ADMM. The preconditioned and over-relaxed Douglas-Rachford splitting methods are also considered for the Potts model. Our framework can handle both the two-labeling or multi-labeling problems with appropriate block preconditioners based on Eckstein-Bertsekas and Fortin-Glowinski splitting techniques.
In this work, we initiate the study of fault tolerant Max Cut, where given an edge-weighted undirected graph $G=(V,E)$, the goal is to find a cut $Ssubseteq V$ that maximizes the total weight of edges that cross $S$ even after an adversary removes $k$ vertices from $G$. We consider two types of adversaries: an adaptive adversary that sees the outcome of the random coin tosses used by the algorithm, and an oblivious adversary that does not. For any constant number of failures $k$ we present an approximation of $(0.878-epsilon)$ against an adaptive adversary and of $alpha_{GW}approx 0.8786$ against an oblivious adversary (here $alpha_{GW}$ is the approximation achieved by the random hyperplane algorithm of [Goemans-Williamson J. ACM `95]). Additionally, we present a hardness of approximation of $alpha_{GW}$ against both types of adversaries, rendering our results (virtually) tight. The non-linear nature of the fault tolerant objective makes the design and analysis of algorithms harder when compared to the classic Max Cut. Hence, we employ approaches ranging from multi-objective optimization to LP duality and the ellipsoid algorithm to obtain our results.
We show that the smoothed complexity of the FLIP algorithm for local Max-Cut is at most $smash{phi n^{O(sqrt{log n})}}$, where $n$ is the number of nodes in the graph and $phi$ is a parameter that measures the magnitude of perturbations applied on its edge weights. This improves the previously best upper bound of $phi n^{O(log n)}$ by Etscheid and R{o}glin. Our result is based on an analysis of long sequences of flips, which shows~that~it is very unlikely for every flip in a long sequence to incur a positive but small improvement in the cut weight. We also extend the same upper bound on the smoothed complexity of FLIP to all binary Maximum Constraint Satisfaction Problems.