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Title: New facets of the STS polytope generated from known facets of the ATS polytope.

Journal Article · · Proposed for publication in the Journal of the Discrete Optimization.
OSTI ID:970744
 [1];  [2];  [3];
  1. Bryn Athyn College of the New Church, Bryn Athyn, PA
  2. University of Padova, Padova, Italy
  3. Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA

While it had been known for a long time how to transform an asymmetric traveling salesman (ATS) problem on the complete graph with n vertices into a symmetric traveling salesman (STS) problem on an incomplete graph with 2n vertices, no method was available for using this correspondence to derive facets of the symmetric polytope from facets of the asymmetric polytope until the work of E. Balas and M. Fischetti in [Lifted cycle inequalities for the asymmetric traveling salesman problem, Mathematics of Operations Research 24 (2) (1999) 273-292] suggested an approach. The original Balas-Fischetti method uses a standard sequential lifting procedure for the computation of the coefficient of the edges that are missing in the incomplete STS graph, which is a difficult task when addressing classes of (as opposed to single) inequalities. In this paper we introduce a systematic procedure for accomplishing the lifting task. The procedure exploits the structure of the tight STS tours and organizes them into a suitable tree structure. The potential of the method is illustrated by deriving large new classes of facet-defining STS inequalities.

Research Organization:
Sandia National Laboratories (SNL), Albuquerque, NM, and Livermore, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE
DOE Contract Number:
AC04-94AL85000
OSTI ID:
970744
Report Number(s):
SAND2005-3566J; TRN: US201003%%13
Journal Information:
Proposed for publication in the Journal of the Discrete Optimization., Journal Name: Proposed for publication in the Journal of the Discrete Optimization.
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English