Negative-Weight Shortest Paths and Unit Capacity Minimum Cost Flow in $\tilde{O}(m^{10/7} \log W)$ Time

Michael B. Cohen; Aleksander Madry; Piotr Sankowski; Adrian Vladu

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arXiv · 1605.01717

Negative-Weight Shortest Paths and Unit Capacity Minimum Cost Flow in $\tilde{O}(m^{10/7} \log W)$ Time

Michael B. Cohen·Aleksander Madry·Piotr Sankowski·Adrian Vladu

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Abstract

In this paper, we study a set of combinatorial optimization problems on weighted graphs: the shortest path problem with negative weights, the weighted perfect bipartite matching problem, the unit-capacity minimum-cost maximum flow problem and the weighted perfect bipartite $b$-matching problem under the assumption that $\Vert b\Vert_1=O(m)$. We show that each one of these four problems can be solved in $\tilde{O}(m^{10/7}\log W)$ time, where $W$ is the absolute maximum weight of an edge in the graph, which gives the first in over 25 years polynomial improvement in their sparse-graph time complexity. At a high level, our algorithms build on the interior-point method-based framework developed by Madry (FOCS 2013) for solving unit-capacity maximum flow problem. We develop a refined way to analyze this framework, as well as provide new variants of the underlying preconditioning and perturbation techniques. Consequently, we are able to extend the whole interior-point method-based approach to make it applicable in the weighted graph regime.

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Michael B. Cohen, Aleksander Madry, Piotr Sankowski, Adrian Vladu. 2016-05-05. Negative-Weight Shortest Paths and Unit Capacity Minimum Cost Flow in $\tilde{O}(m^{10/7} \log W)$ Time. https://arxiv.org/abs/1605.01717

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