Combinatorial Optimization

401-4904-00 FS 2018

Rico Zenklusen

Contents
1 Polyhedral descriptions: basic ideas and examples 2
1.1 Polyhedral descriptions: What is it and why care? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.2 How to find an inequality-description of PF ? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.3 Bipartite matching polytope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.3.1 Quick recap of total unimodularity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.3.2 Proving (iii) using total unimodularity (TU-ness) . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.3.3 Proving (iii) by disproving existence of fractional extreme points . . 6
1.3.4 Some nice implications coming from the inequality-description of PM 8
1.4 Polyhedral descriptions of short s-t paths . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.5 Spanning tree polytope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
1.6 The r-arborescence polytope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
1.7 Non-bipartite matchings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

2 Combinatorial uncrossing 16
2.1 Integrality of spanning tree polytope through uncrossing . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2.2 Integrality of the dominant of the r-arborescence polytope . . . . . . . . . . 19
2.3 Upper bound on number of edges of minimally k-edge-connected graphs . . 21

3 Ellipsoid Method 24
3.1 From checking feasibility to optimization over {0, 1}-polytopes . . . . . . . 32
3.2 The non-full-dimensional case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
3.3 Example applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
3.4 The other way around: from optimization to separation . . . . . . . . . . . 37

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1 Polyhedral descriptions: basic ideas and examples

Combinatorial optimization problem can often be described by:
• A finite set N , called ground set,
• a family F ⊆ 2N of feasible sets, also called solutions, and
• an objective function w : N → Z to maximize/minimize.
The corresponding combinatorial problem is then

P
max / min w(F ) := e∈F w(e)
(1)
F ∈ F

Some examples:

1. Maximum weight matchings. Given is an undirected graph G = (V, E) with

nonnegative edge weights w : E → Z≥0 .
• Ground set: N = E.
• Feasible sets: F is family of all sets M ⊆ E such that no vertex contains more
than one endpoint of edges in M . Such a set M is called a matching.
• Objective : maximize w.
Two important special cases of the problem:
• Maximum cardinality matchings: w is given by w(U ) = |U | for U ⊆ E.
• Maximum weight/cardinality bipartite matchings: G = (V, E) is a bipartite
graph, i.e., there is a bipartition V = X ∪ Y such that each e ∈ E has one
endpoint in X and one in Y .

2. Shortest s-t path problem. Given is a undirected or directed graph G = (V, E),
two vertices s, t ∈ V , and a length function ` : E → Z≥0 .
• N = E,
• F are all subsets of edges corresponding to s-t paths.
• Objective: minimize w = `.

3. Minimum weight spanning tree. Given is an undirected graph G = (V, E) and

nonnegative edge weights w : E → Z≥0 .
• N = E,
• F are all sets F ⊆ E that correspond to spanning trees.
• Objective: minimize w.

1.1 Polyhedral descriptions: What is it and why care?

Consider the family F ⊆ 2N of feasible sets of a combinatorial optimization problem (1).
We can describe each solution F ∈ F by its incidence/characteristic vector χF ∈ {0, 1}N ,
where (
F 1 if e ∈ F,
χ (e) =
0 if e ∈ N \ F.
The polytope that corresponds to F is the polytope PF ⊆ [0, 1]N whose vertices are
precisely incidence vectors of solutions, i.e.,

PF = conv({χF | F ∈ F}), (2)

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where for any set X ⊆ Rn , conv(X) ⊆ Rn is the convex hull of X, i.e., the unique smallest
convex set containing X. We recall that for a set X ⊆ Rn , the convex hull conv(X) of X
can be described by all convex combinations of points in X, i.e.,
( k 
k
)
X  X
conv(X) = λi xi  k ∈ Z>0 , xi ∈ X and λi ∈ R≥0 ∀i ∈ [k] and λi = 1 .


i=1 i=1

Furthermore, by Carathéodory’s Theorem, one can fix k to be equal to n + 1 in the above

description of conv(X) still obtaining the same set.
Hence, PF is a {0, 1}-polytope, i.e., all its vertices only have coordinates ∈ {0, 1}.
Notice that solving the original combinatorial problem (1) is equivalent to finding a vertex
solution—also called basic solution—to the following LP, where we interpret w : N → Z
as a vector w ∈ ZN :

max / min wT x
(3)
x ∈ PF

The main problem of this approach is that the description of PF given by (2) refers to
all sets in F, which are typically exponentially (in n := |N |) many. Problems where |F| is
small are often not that interesting. In particular, if |F| = O(poly(n)), then one could try
to solve the combinatorial optimization problem efficiently by simply checking all feasible
solutions. Of course, such an approach would still require to have a method to enumerate
all feasible solutions.
Our goal is to get an inequality-description of PF , i.e., write PF as PF = {x ∈ RN |
Ax ≤ b}. This has many advantages:
• Often, PF only has O(poly(n)) facets, even though it has 2Ω(n) vertices, i.e., feasible
solutions. In this case, PF can be described compactly by its facets.
→ Think about P = [0, 1]n . P has 2n vertices but only 2n facets:

P = {x ∈ Rn | 0 ≤ xi ≤ 1 ∀i ∈ [n]},

where [n] := {1, . . . , n}.

• One good description of PF allows for optimizing any linear objective function.
→ Combinatorial algorithms are often less versatile. E.g., Edmonds’ blossom shrink-
ing algorithm is a very elegant combinatorial algorithm for finding a maximum
cardinality matching. However, it is hard to generalize this approach to the
weighted case.

• Even when PF has exponentially many facets, a description of them can often be
obtained. If so, we can often still solve the LP efficiently.
→ . . . by using, e.g., the Ellipsoid Method. We will discuss the Ellipsoid Method
later in class, when we talk about the “equivalence” between separation and
optimization.
• An inequality-description of PF is often helpful when trying to solve a related com-
binatorial optimization problem, e.g., the original one with some additional linear
constraints.

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• LP dual of (3) can often be interpreted combinatorially. Possible implications:

– Optimality certificates through strong duality. E.g., many classical certificates
like max-flow min-cut can be derived this way.
– Fast algorithms based on dual. E.g., primal-dual algorithms.

• Get a better understanding of the original combinatorial optimization problem. In

particular, one can use elegant polyhedral proof techniques to derive results.

• Leverage general polyhedral techniques to design strong algorithms.

E.g., network simplex algorithms are a way to interpret the simplex algorithm com-
binatorially.

1.2 How to find an inequality-description of PF ?

There is no one-size-fits-all method. However, one typical high-level approach is to “guess”
the polytope and show that it is the right one, following the recipe below:
(i) Determine (guess) a candidate polytope P ⊆ [0, 1]N defined by some linear inequality
description P = {x ∈ RN | Ax ≤ b}, which we want to prove to be equal to PF .
(ii) Prove that P contains the right integral points, i.e.,
P ∩ {0, 1}N = {χF | F ∈ F}.
This is normally quite easy. Notice that {χF | F ∈ F} = PF ∩ {0, 1}N .
(iii) Show that P is a {0, 1}-polytope. Since P ⊆ [0, 1]N , this is equivalent to showing
that P is integral.
If one can show (ii) and (iii), then P = PF , since P only contains {0, 1}-vertices by (iii),
and those vertices are the same as the ones of PF due to (ii).

1.3 Bipartite matching polytope

Let G = (V, E) be an undirected, loopless, bipartite graph with corresponding bipartition
˙ , and let M ⊆ 2E be all matchings of G. Hence, using the notation introduced
V = X ∪Y
previously, we have N = E and F = M.
Furthermore, for v ∈ V we denote by δ(v) ⊆ E all edges with precisely one endpoint
in V .
Theorem 1. The bipartite matching polytope PM is given by
PM = {x ∈ RE
≥0 | x(δ(v)) ≤ 1 ∀v ∈ V }. (4)
We will prove Theorem 1 by first showing (ii), and then presenting two general tech-
niques that prove (iii). Let P = {x ∈ RE
≥0 | x(δ(x)) ≤ 1 ∀v ∈ V }. Hence, we have to show
P = PM .

Proof of point (ii). We prove (ii) by showing that for any F ⊆ E we have
χF ∈ P ∩ {0, 1}N ⇔ F ∈ M.
We distinguish between F ∈ M and F ∈ 2E \ M.
If F ∈ M then, since F is a matching, we have |F ∩ δ(v)| ≤ 1 ∀v ∈ V . Notice that
|F ∩ δ(v)| = χF (δ(v)). Hence, χF (δ(v)) ≤ 1 ∀v ∈ V , and thus χF ∈ P , as desired.
If F ∈ 2E \ M then, since F is not a matching, there exists a vertex v ∈ V such that
|F ∩ δ(v)| ≥ 2, which can be rephrased as χF (δ(v)) ≥ 2. Hence, χF 6∈ P .

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It remains to prove (iii).

one showing that constraint matrix is totally unimodular,
We will see 2 proofs of (iii)
one showing that P has no fractional extreme points.
We start by recalling some basics about total unimodularity.

1.3.1 Quick recap of total unimodularity

Definition 2. A matrix is totally unimodular if the determinant of any square submatrix
of it is either 0, 1,or −1.
Remark. A ∈ Rm×n is TU ⇒ A ∈ {−1, 0, 1}m×n .
This follows by observing that each single entry of the matrix A is itself a square
submatrix and its determinant is the entry itself.
Remark. A is TU ⇔ AT is TU. This follows by the definition of TU matrices and the
fact that the determinant of any square matrix is equal to the determinant of its transpose.
The main algorithmic motivation for studying totally unimodular matrices is the fol-
lowing.
Theorem 3. Let A ∈ Rm×n .

A is TU ⇔ P = {x ∈ Rn | Ax ≤ b, x ≥ 0} is integral ∀b ∈ Zm .

The definition of total unimodularity as well as Theorem 3 do not provide very useful
means to check that some matrix is totally unimodular. One of the most useful charac-
terization of total unimodularity is the following theorem by Ghouila and Houri.
Theorem 4 (Ghouila-Houri). A matrix A ∈ Rm×n is TU if and only if for every subset
of the rows R ⊆ [m], there is a partition R = R1 ∪ R2 such that for every j ∈ [n],
X X
Aij − Aij ∈ {−1, 0, 1}.
i∈R1 i∈R2

Remark. Since A is TU if and only if AT is TU, one can exchange the roles of rows and
columns in Theorem 4.

1.3.2 Proving (iii) using total unimodularity (TU-ness)

We can write P in the following form:

P = {x ∈ RE | Ax ≤ b, x ≥ 0},

where A and b are defined as follows. First observe that since P contains one constraint
for each vertex, and one variable for each edges, we have A ∈ RV ×E and b ∈ RV . The
right-hand side of each constraint of P , that is not a nonnegativity constraint, is 1, i.e.,
b = 1, where 1 ∈ RV is the all-ones vector.
The matrix A is the vertex-edge incidence matrix of G, i.e, for every v ∈ V and e ∈ E,
(
1 if v ∈ e,
A(v, e) =
0 if v 6∈ e.

Figure 1 shows two example graphs—one bipartite and the other one not bipartite—with
their corresponding vertex-edge incidence matrices, denoted by A.

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e1 e2 e3 e4 e5 e6 e7
 
e2 e6 v1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0
v1 v3 v5
v2 
 1 0 1 0 0 0 0


v3
 
 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 
e1 e4 e7 A= v  
4

 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 

e3 e5 v5 
0 0 0 0 0 1 1

v2 v4 v6  
v6 0 0 0 0 1 0 1

v4 e1 e2 e3 e4 e5
 
e2 e5 v1 1 1 0 0 0
 
v2  1 0 1 1 0 
v1 e4 v3 A= v  
3

 0 0 1 0 1 

e1 e3 v4 0 1 0 1 1
v2
Figure 1: Example graphs with corresponding vertex-edge incidence matrices.

Theorem 5. Let G = (V, E) an undirected graph with vertex-edge incidence matrix A.

Then
G is bipartite ⇔ A is TU.

Proof. ⇐) Left as an exercise.

⇒) We use the characterization of Ghouila-Houri to show that A is totally unimodular if
˙ .
G = (V, E) is bipartite with bipartition V = X ∪Y
Consider a subset of the rows of A. This subset corresponds to some subset of the
vertices R ⊆ V . We partition R into R1 = R ∩ X and R2 = R ∩ Y . For any column of A,
which corresponds to some edge e ∈ E, we have
X X
Av,e − Av,e ∈ {−1, 0, 1}.
v∈R1 v∈R2
| {z } | {z }
=|e∩R1 |≤|e∩X|=1 =|e∩R2 |≤|e∩Y |=1

Notice that the above statement follows by the fact that each of the two sums in the
above expression is either 0 or 1. Thus, their difference is either −1, 0 or 1. This shows
that the criterion of Ghouila and Houri holds for the matrix A, implying that A is totally
unimodular.

Combining Theorem 5 and Theorem 3, we obtain that P = {x ∈ RE | Ax ≤ 1, x ≥ 0}

is integral, and thus P = PM as desired.

1.3.3 Proving (iii) by disproving existence of fractional extreme points

Let x ∈ P be a vertex of P . For sake of contradiction assume x 6∈ {0, 1}E . Let U ⊆ E be
all edges with fractional values, i.e.,

U = {e ∈ E | 0 < x(e) < 1}.

Since x is not integral, U 6= ∅. We distinguish two cases, depending on whether U contains

a cycle.

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e5
e2 C = {e1 , . . . , e6 }
e1 U
U \C
e3 e4

e6

Figure 2: Example for first case of proof where U contains a cycle C.

First case: U contains a cycle C ⊆ U .

Hence, C must be even since G is bipartite. Let C = {e1 , . . . , ek } ⊆ U with k even be
the edges along C. Let

W1 = {ei | i ∈ [k], i odd},

W2 = {ei | i ∈ [k], i even}.

For  ∈ R, let x ∈ RE be defined by

x = x +  · χW1 −  · χW2 .

We will show that there is some ρ > 0 such that xρ , x−ρ ∈ P . This contradicts x being
a vertex, or equivalently, an extreme point; indeed, x would be the midpoint of the two
distinct points xρ ∈ P and x−ρ ∈ P . Without loss of generality we only prove xρ ∈ P ; the
statement x−ρ ∈ P reduces to this case by exchanging the roles of W1 and W2 , which can
be done by renumbering the edges on C.
Let
ρ = min{x(e)}.
e∈C

We clearly have ρ > 0 since x(e) > 0 ∀e ∈ U and C ⊆ U . For any v ∈ V , we have

xρ (δ(v)) = x(δ(v)) ≤ 1,

which is true even for any ρ ∈ R. Furthermore, for e ∈ E \ C, we have xρ (e) = x(e) ≥ 0,
and for e ∈ C we have
xρ (e) ≥ x(e) − ρ ≥ 0.
|{z}
≤x(e)

Thus, xρ , x−ρ ∈ P , leading to a contradiction of x being a vertex.

Second case: U does not contain cycles.
Hence U are the edges of a forest. Let Q ⊆ U be any maximal path in U , i.e., Q is
the unique path between some pair of leaf vertices u, v of U . We number the edges in
Q = {e1 , . . . , ek } in the way they are encountered when traversing Q from u to v. Let

W1 = {ei | i ∈ [k], i odd},

W2 = {ei | i ∈ [k], i even}.

Again, we define for  ∈ R

x = x +  · χW1 −  · χW2 ,

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e2 Q = {e1 , . . . , e4 }
e1 U
U \Q
e3 e4

u v

Figure 3: Example for second case of proof where U is a forest.

and this time we set

ρ = min{min{x(e), 1 − x(e)}}.
e∈Q

By definition of ρ, we clearly have ρ > 0 and x−ρ , xρ ∈ [0, 1]E . Consider xρ (reasoning for
x−ρ is identical). For all w ∈ V \ {u, v} we have xρ (δ(w)) = x(δ(w)) ≤ 1. It remains to
show xρ (δ(u)) ≤ 1 and xρ (δ(v)) ≤ 1. W.l.o.g. we only show xρ (δ(u)) ≤ 1, since the roles
of u and v can be exchanged by reversing the path P .
Notice that only one edge of U is adjacent to u since u was chosen to be a leaf vertex
of the forest U . Thus all edges e ∈ δ(u) \ U satisfy x(e) ∈ {0, 1}. However, no edge
e ∈ δ(u) \ U can satisfy x(e) = 1 since this would imply x 6∈ P as x(δ(u)) ≥ x(e) + x(e1 ) =
1 + x(e1 ) > 1. Hence, of all edges e ∈ δ(u), e1 is the only edge with xρ (e) > 0. Thus
xρ (δ(u)) = xρ (e1 ) ≤ 1, since xρ ∈ [0, 1]E . Hence xρ ∈ P .
Thus x can again be expressed as the midpoint of xρ , x−ρ ∈ P with xρ 6= x−ρ and
therefore cannot be a vertex of P . Hence, P is integral, and therefore P = PM .

1.3.4 Some nice implications coming from the inequality-description of PM

Implication 1: perfect bipartite matching polytope A matching M ∈ M is called
perfect, if it touches all vertices, i.e., |M | = |V |/2. Of course, a perfect matching can only
exist if |V | is even. Furthermore, for a bipartite graph G = (V, E) with corresponding
bipartition V = X ∪Y ˙ , one needs |X| = |Y | for a perfect matching to exist.
Theorem 6. The perfect matching polytope of a bipartite graph G = (V, E) is given by
P = {x ∈ RE
≥0 | x(δ(v)) = 1 ∀v ∈ V }.

Proof. Again, one can easily check that P contains the right integral points. Its integrality
follows by observing that P is a face of the matching polytope PM or the empty set, and
hence an integral polytope.
Key property we exploit: the face of any integral polytope is an integral polytope.
This holds since for any face F ⊆ P of a polytope P , any vertex of F is also a vertex of
P.

Implication 2: perfect matchings in bipartite d-regular graphs A graph is called

d-regular for some d ∈ Z≥0 if every vertex has degree d.
Theorem 7. Let d ∈ Z≥1 . Every d-regular bipartite graph admits a perfect matching.
Proof. Using Theorem 6, let P = {x ∈ RE ≥0 | x(δ(v)) = 1 ∀v ∈ V } be the perfect bipartite
matching polytope of a d-regular bipartite graph. Notice that the point x ∈ RE given by
x(e) = d1 for e ∈ E, satisfies x ∈ P . Hence, P 6= ∅, and P therefore contains a vertex,
which corresponds to a perfect matching.

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1.4 Polyhedral descriptions of short s-t paths

Let G = (V, A) be a directed graph, and let s, t ∈ V , s 6= t. Recall, that paths are
vertex-disjoint.
No “good” polyhedra description is known of the s-t path polytope, i.e., one over
which we could optimize linear functions in polynomial time. This is not surprising,
because such a description would imply P = NP since one could solve the longest s-t path
problem, which is well-known to be NP-hard. In particular, one can solve the Hamiltonian
path problem if one can find longest s-t paths: It suffices to find a longest s-t path with
unit edge lengths for all O(n2 ) pairs of vertices s, t ∈ V, s 6= t, and check whether one of
them is Hamiltonian.
Still, when trying to find shortest paths with respect to any positive length function,
it is not hard to find a polyhedral approach. Consider the polytope
   
 1 if v = s,
   
  
A  + −
P = x ∈ [0, 1]  x(δ (v)) − x(δ (v)) = −1 if v = t, ∀v ∈ V ,
   
0 if v ∈ V \ {s, t},
   

where, for v ∈ V , δ + (v) ⊆ A are all arcs going out of v, and δ − (v) ⊆ A are all arcs entering
v. Consider first the integral solutions of P . Notice that the integral solution of P do not
correspond one-to-one to s-t paths. More precisely, each s-t path is an integral solution of
P , however, some integral solutions of P are not s-t paths. More precisely, one can easily
prove (and we leave this as an exercise) that integral vertices in P correspond precisely to
the disjoint union of an s-t path and possibly some additional cycles.
Hence, if we can show integrality of P , then for any positive weights (or lengths)
w : A → Z>0 , a basic solution to min{wT x | x ∈ P } will correspond to a w-shortest s-t
path. Thus, P allows us to efficiently find shortest s-t paths with linear programming
techniques. Notice that even if the weights w are nonnegative instead of positive, i.e.,
w : E → Z≥0 , we can still find a shortest path via linear programming on P . An optimal
vertex solution will correspond to a minimum weight set U ⊆ E that is a disjoint union
of an s-t path and cycles, where all cycles must have zero length by optimality of U . One
can easily show that any s-t path P ⊆ U is a shortest s-t path in G. The same approach
works even if the weights are allowed to have negative value, but have the property of
being conservative, which means that no cycle has strictly negative weights. Conservative
weights cover the classical shortest path settings considered by specialized shortest path
algorithms.
To show integrality of P , we will show that its corresponding constraint matrix is TU.
First observe that P can be rewritten as
P = {x ∈ RA | Dx = b, 1 ≥ x ≥ 0},
where, 1 = χA is the all-ones vector, b ∈ {−1, 0, 1}V is defined by

 1 if v = s,

b(v) = −1 if v = t,

0 if v ∈ V \ {s, t},


and D ∈ {−1, 0, 1}V ×A is the vertex-arc incidence matrix of the directed (loopless) graph
G, which is defined as follows: for v ∈ V , a ∈ A:

+
 1 if a ∈ δ (v),

D(v, a) = −1 if a ∈ δ − (v),

0 otherwise .


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It thus suffices to show that D is TU to obtain integrality of P .

Theorem 8. The vertex-arc incidence matrix D ∈ {−1, 0, 1}V ×A of any directed (loopless)
graph G = (V, A) is TU.

Proof. We apply the Ghouila-Houri characterization to the rows of D. For any subset
R ⊆ V of the rows, we choose the partition R1 = R and R2 = ∅. Since each column of D
has only zeros except for precisely one 1 and one −1, summing any subsets of the elements
of any column will lead to a total sum of either −1,0, or 1. Hence,
X
Dv,a ∈ {−1, 0, 1} ∀a ∈ A,
v∈R1

as desired. Or more formally, for a = (u, v) ∈ A, we have

Dv,a = 1u∈R1 − 1v∈R1 ∈ {−1, 0, 1},

X
| {z } | {z }
v∈R1
∈{0,1} ∈{0,1}

where, for w ∈ V , 1w∈R1 = 1 if w ∈ R1 and 1w∈R1 = 0 otherwise.

1.5 Spanning tree polytope

Let G = (V, E) be an undirected graph. For any set S ⊆ V , we denote by E[S] ⊆ E all
edges with both endpoints in S, i.e.,

E[S] = {e ∈ E | e ⊆ S}.

Theorem 9. The spanning tree polytope of an undirected loopless graph G = (V, E) is

given by   
E 
 x(E) = |V | − 1,
P = x ∈ R≥0  .
x(E[S]) ≤ |S| − 1 ∀S ( V, |S| ≥ 2.

Again, one can easily check that P contains the right integral points, i.e., the {0, 1}-
points in P are precisely the incidence vectors of spanning trees. To check this, the
following definition of spanning trees is useful: A set T ⊆ E is a spanning tree if and only
if |T | = |V | − 1 and T does no contain any cycle. We will prove integrality of the polytope
P in Section 2, using a powerful technique known as combinatorial uncrossing.
The constraints of the spanning tree polytope are often divided into two groups, namely
the nonnegativity constraint x ≥ 0, and all the other constraints which are called spanning
tree constraints.

1.6 The r-arborescence polytope

Definition 10 (arborescence, r-arborescence). Let G = (V, A) be a directed graph. An
arborescence in G is an arc set T ⊆ A such that
(i) T is a spanning tree (when disregarding the arc directions), and
(ii) there is one vertex r from which all edges are directed away, i.e., every vertex v ∈ V
can be reached from r using a directed path in T .
The vertex r in condition (ii) is called the root of the arborescence, and T is called an
r-arborescence.

Figure 4 shows an example of an r-arborescence.

Notice that condition (ii) can equivalently be replaced by

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Combinatorial Optimization Spring Term 2018 Rico Zenklusen

Figure 4: Example of an r-arborescence.

(ii’) Every vertex has at most one incoming arc.

Theorem 11. The arborescence polytope of a directed loopless graph G = (V, A) is given
by   
  x(A) = |V | − 1, 
P = x ∈ RA

≥0 
 x(A[S]) ≤ |S| − 1 ∀S ( V, |S| ≥ 2, ,
  x(δ − (v)) ≤ 1 ∀v ∈ V.


where A[S] ⊆ A for S ⊆ V denotes all arcs with both endpoints in S.

A polyhedron that is closely related to the arborescence polytope and has a very
elegant description, is the so-called dominant of the arborescence polytope. The dominant
of the arborescence polytope will also provide an excellent example to show how integrality
of a polyhedron can be proven using a technique called combinatorial uncrossing. The
dominant can be defined for any polyhedron.

Definition 12 (dominant of a polyhedron). The dominant dom(P ) of a polyhedron P ⊆

Rn is the polyhedron defined by

dom(P ) = P + Rn≥0 = {x + y | x ∈ P, y ∈ Rn≥0 }.

Notice that the dominant of any nonempty polyhedron is an unbounded set, and
therefore not a polytope, which is bounded by definition.
Apart from sometimes having a simpler description, the dominant of a polytope can
also often be used for optimization. For example, consider the problem of finding a min-
imum weight r-arborescence with respect to some positive arc weights w ∈ ZA >0 . Let P
be the r-arborescence polytope. Then this problem corresponds to minimizing wT x over
all x ∈ P . However, this is equivalent to minimizing wT x over x ∈ dom(P ). Indeed,
any x ∈ dom(P ) can be written as x = y + z, where y ∈ P and z ∈ RA ≥0 . Therefore for
x ∈ dom(P ) to be a minimizer of wT x, we must have z = 0; for otherwise, wT y < wT x
and y ∈ P ⊆ dom(P ), violating that x ∈ dom(P ) minimizes wT x.

Theorem 13. The dominant of the r-arborescence polytope is given by

P = x ∈ RA  x(δ − (S)) ≥ 1 ∀S ⊆ V \ {r}, S 6=. ∅

 
≥0

We will prove integrality of this polyhedron later, when talking about combinatorial
uncrossing.

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Combinatorial Optimization Spring Term 2018 Rico Zenklusen

1.7 Non-bipartite matchings

We will start by introducing the perfect matching polytope and then derive therefrom the
description of the matching polytope.

Theorem 14. The perfect matching polytope of G = (V, E) is given by

  
E  x(δ(v)) = 1 ∀v ∈ V,

P = x ∈ R≥0  .
x(δ(S)) ≥ 1 ∀S ⊆ V, |S| odd.

Proof. It is easy to check that P contains the right integral points. Thus, it remains to
show integrality of P .
By sake of contradiction assume that there are graphs G = (V, E) for which P is not
integral. Among all such graphs let G = (V, E) be a one that minimizes |V | + |E|, i.e.,
we look at a smallest bad example, and let P be the corresponding polytope as defined
in Theorem 14. Notice that we must have that |V | is even. For otherwise the polytope
P is indeed the perfect matching polytope because it is empty, which follows from the
constraint x(δ(V )) ≥ 1, which is impossible to satisfy since δ(V ) = ∅.
Let y ∈ P be a vertex of P that is fractional. We start by observing some basic
properties following from the fact that we chose a smallest bad example. In particular,
G is connected. For otherwise, a smaller bad example is obtained by only considering
one of its connected components containing a y-fractional edge, which violates minimality
of G. Moreover, there is no 0-edge, i.e., an edge e ∈ E such that y(e) = 0, because
such an edge could be deleted leading to a smaller bad example. Similarly, there is no
1-edge e = {u, v} ∈ E, because in this case there can be no other edge f except for e
that is incident with either u or v, since we would have y(f ) = 0 due to y(δ(u)) = 1
and y(δ(v)) = 1, and we already know that there is no 0-edge. Finally, δ({u, v}) = ∅
implies that G is not connected, because G must contain at least one edge besides e
because there is an edge with fractional y-value. Hence, y is fractional on all edges, i.e.,
y(e) ∈ (0, 1) ∀e ∈ E.
Since y is a vertex of P it can be defined as the unique solution to |E| linearly inde-
pendent constraints of P that are y-tight, i.e., tight for the point y. If it is clear from the
context, we also often just talk about tight constraints. P has three types of constraints:
degree constraints (x(δ(v)) = 1 for v ∈ V ), cut constraints (x(δ(S)) ≥ 1 for S ⊆ V, |S|
odd), and nonnegativity constraints (x(e) ≥ 0 for e ∈ E). Notice that none of the non-
negativity constraints are tight since y > 0. Hence, y is the unique solution to a full-rank
linear system of the following type:

x(δ(v)) = 1 ∀v ∈ W,
(5)
x(δ(S)) = 1 ∀S ∈ F,

where W ⊆ V , F ⊆ {S ⊆ V | |S| odd}, and |W | + |F| = |E| because the system is

full-rank. Without loss of generality, we assume that F only contains sets S ⊆ V such
that |S| =
6 1 and |S| =
6 |V | − 1. Indeed, if |S| = 1, then the constraint x(δ(S)) = 1 can be
handled as a tight degree constraints. The same holds for |S| = |V | − 1, in which case the
constraint x(δ(S)) = 1 is identical to x(δ(V \ S)) = 1, which is a degree constraint.
We now distinguish between two cases depending on whether F = ∅ or not.
Case F = ∅: We start with an observation that is independent of this case. Namely,
each vertex must have degree at least two, since a degree-one vertex v would need to be
adjacent to a 1-edge to satisfy the degree constraint y(δ(v)) = 1. This implies |E| ≥ |V |.
Furthermore, since (5) is full-rank, we have |W | = |E|. Finally, W ⊆ V implies |W | ≤ |V |,

12
Combinatorial Optimization Spring Term 2018 Rico Zenklusen

and by combining all above inequalities we get |V | ≤ |E| = |W | ≤ |V |. Hence, |W | = |V |,

i.e., the system (5) contains all degree constraints, and G is a graph where each vertex has
degree precisely 2. Since G is connected, it must be a single cycle containing all vertices.
Let V = {v1 , . . . , vn } be a consecutive numbering of the vertices when going along the
cycle. We now get a contradiction by showing that the system (5) is not full-rank. Indeed,
we have X X
χδ(vi ) = χδ(vi ) ,
i∈[n],i even i∈[n],i odd

which shows that there is a linear dependence within the degree constraints.
Case F 6= ∅: Let S ∈ F. As discussed, we have |S| > 1 and |V \ S| > 1. We consider
two graphs, G1 = G/S and G2 = G/(V \ S), which are obtained from G by contracting S
and V \ S, respectively. Contracting S means that we replace all vertices in S by a single
new vertex vS . Furthermore, all edges with both endpoints in S are deleted, and any edge
with one endpoint in S and the other one v ∈ V \ S outside of S is replaced by an edge
between vS and v. Let y1 and y2 be the restriction of y to all non-contracted edges in
G1 and G2 , respectively. One can easily observe that yi ∈ PGi for i ∈ {1, 2}, where PGi
is the polytope as defined by Theorem 14 for the graph Gi . Notice that both graphs G1
and G2 are strictly smaller than G in terms of the sum of their number of vertices and
edges. Since G was a smallest bad example, the two polytopes PG1 and PG2 are therefore
the perfect matching polytopes of G1 and G2 . Hence, we can write yi for i ∈ {1, 2} as a
convex combination of perfect matchings in Gi . In particular, there is some N ∈ Z>0 such
that for i ∈ {1, 2}
N
1 X Mj
yi = χ i, (6)
N
j=1

where Mij is a perfect matching in Gi for i ∈ {1, 2} and j ∈ [N ]. Notice that both
graphs G1 and G2 contain the edges δ(S). More precisely, for both graph G1 , G2 , the set
δ(S) are precisely all edges incident with the vertex representing the contracted set S and
V \ S, respectively. Hence, each perfect matching Mij contains precisely one edge of δ(S).
Furthermore, for i ∈ {1, 2}, each edge e ∈ δ(S) must be contained in precisely N · yi (e)
matchings of the family {Mij }j∈[N ] for (6) to be true. Additionally, since both y1 and y2
are just restrictions of y, they coincide on the edges δ(S). Hence, y(e) = y1 (e) = y2 (e)
for e ∈ δ(S). Thus, for every e ∈ δ(S), there is the same number of perfect matchings in
{M1j }j∈[N ] that contain e as there are perfect matchings in {M2j }j∈[N ] containing e. We
can therefore choose the numberings of those matchings, i.e., the indices j, such that

M1j ∩ δ(S) = M2j ∩ δ(S) ∀ j ∈ [N ].

This implies that M1j ∪ M2j is a perfect matching in G. Hence, we have

N
1 X M1j ∪M2j
y= χ ,
N
j=1

which implies that y is a convex combination of perfect matchings in G. This violates

the fact that y is a fractional vertex of P , because we were able to write y as a convex
combination of {0, 1}-points of P , thus finding a nontrivial convex combination for writing
y. Hence, y is not an extreme point of P , and thus not a vertex of P .

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Combinatorial Optimization Spring Term 2018 Rico Zenklusen

Theorem 15. The matching polytope of an undirected graph G = (V, E) is given by

  
  x(δ(v)) ≤ 1 ∀v ∈ V, 
P = x ∈ RE  x(E[S]) ≤ |S|−1

2 ∀S ⊆ V, |S| odd, .
x ≥ 0.
  

Proof. As usual, it is easy to check that P contains the right integral points, i.e., P ∩{0, 1}E
are all incidence vectors of matchings in G. Let x ∈ P . We have to show that x is a convex
combination of matchings. We use the following proof plan. We will define an auxiliary
graph H = (W, F ) that extends G, and we will also extend x to a point in y ∈ [0, 1]F ,
which we can show to be in the perfect matching polytope of H using Theorem 14. Hence,
y can be written as a convex combination of perfect matchings of H. From this convex
decomposition we then derive that x is a convex combination of matchings of G.
We start by constructing the auxiliary graph H = (W, F ). Let G0 = (V 0 , E 0 ) be a copy
of G = (V, E), i.e., for every vertex v ∈ V there is a vertex v 0 ∈ V 0 and for every edge
e = {u, v} ∈ E there is an edges e0 = {u0 , v 0 } ∈ E 0 . We define H = (W, F ) to be the
disjoint union of G and G0 , where we add all edges of the type {v, v 0 } for v ∈ V . More
formally,

W = V ∪ V 0,
F = E ∪ E 0 ∪ {{v, v 0 } | v ∈ V }.

Furthermore, we define y ∈ [0, 1]F by

y(e) = x(e) ∀e ∈ E,
y(e0 ) = x(e) ∀e ∈ E,
0
y({v, v }) = 1 − x(δ(v)) ∀v ∈ V.

We now show that y is in the perfect matching polytope of H, which is described by

Theorem 14. First, we clearly have y ≥ 0 and y(δH (w)) = 1 for w ∈ W . Let Q ⊆ W
be a set with |Q| odd. It remains to show y(δH (Q)) ≥ 1 for y to be in the perfect
matching polytope of H. Let A = Q ∩ V , and B 0 = Q ∩ V 0 . Furthermore, we define
B = {v ∈ V | v 0 ∈ B 0 }. We have

y(δH (Q)) = y(δH (Q) ∩ E) + y(δH (Q) ∩ E 0 ) + y(δH (Q) ∩ {{v, v 0 } | v ∈ V }).
| {z } | {z } | {z }
=I =II =III

Now observe that

I = x(δ(A)),
II = x(δ(B)),
X X
III = (1 − x(δ(v))) + (1 − x(δ(v)))
v∈A\B v∈B\A

= |A \ B| − 2x(E[A \ B]) − x(δ(A \ B)) + |B \ A| − 2x(E[B \ A]) − x(δ(B \ A)).

Furthermore,

x(δ(A)) + x(δ(B)) = x(δ(A \ B)) + x(δ(B \ A)) + 2x(E(A ∩ B, V \ (A ∪ B)))

≥ x(δ(A \ B)) + x(δ(B \ A)),

14
Combinatorial Optimization Spring Term 2018 Rico Zenklusen

where for S1 , S2 ⊆ V , the set E(S1 , S2 ) ⊆ E are all edges in G with one endpoint in S1
and the other in S2 . Combining the above, we obtain

y(δH (Q)) ≥ |A \ B| − 2x(E[A \ B]) + |B \ A| − 2x(E[B \ A]). (7)

Now, notice that for any set S ⊆ V , we have

X
2x(E[S]) ≤ x(δ(v)) ≤ |S|, (8)
v∈S

where the first inequality follows by observing that every edges {u, v} ∈ E[S] appears twice
in the middle term: once in δ(u) and once in δ(v). Furthermore, the second inequality
follows by x(δ(v)) ≤ 1 ∀v ∈ V , which holds since x ∈ P .
Notice that
|Q| = |A \ B| + |B \ A| + 2|A ∩ B|.
Hence, since |Q| is odd, either |A \ B| or |B \ A| must be odd. Without loss of generality
assume that |A \ B| is odd. As x ∈ P , we have

|A \ B| − 1
x(E[A \ B]) ≤ . (9)
2
We finally obtain

y(δH (Q)) ≥ |A \ B| − 2x(E[A \ B]) + |B \ A| − 2x(E[B \ A]) (by (7))

≥ |A \ B| − 2x(E[A \ B]) (by (8))
≥1 (by (9)),

thus implying that y is in the perfect matching polytope of H. Hence, y can be written
as a convex combination of perfect matchings in H, i.e.,
k
X
y= λi χMi ,
|{z}
i=1
∈{0,1}F

Pk
where k ∈ Z>0 , λi ≥ 0 for i ∈ [k], i=1 λi = 1, and Mi ⊆ F for i ∈ [k] is a perfect
matching in H = (W, F ). Since x is the restriction of y to the edges in E, we get
k
X
x = y|E = λi χMi ∩E ,
| {z }
i=1
∈{0,1}E

where we use the characteristic vector notation χ in the equation above with respect to
the ground set E instead of F , i.e., χMi ∩E ∈ {0, 1}E . Thus, x is a convex combination of
the matchings M1 ∩ E, . . . , Mk ∩ E in the graph G. This proves that P is contained in the
matching polytope. Furthermore, since P contains the correct integral points, it contains
the matching polytope. Hence, P is the matching polytope.

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Combinatorial Optimization Spring Term 2018 Rico Zenklusen

2 Combinatorial uncrossing
Main goal of combinatorial uncrossing in the context of proving integrality of polytopes:

Given a heavily overdetermined linear system that uniquely

defines a point, find a well-structured full rank subsystem.

2.1 Integrality of spanning tree polytope through uncrossing

We recall the description of the spanning tree polytope claimed by Theorem 9.
  
E 
 x(E) = |V | − 1,
P = x ∈ R≥0  .
x(E[S]) ≤ |S| − 1 ∀S ( V, |S| ≥ 2
As it is common for many combinatorial optimization problems, the spanning tree polytope
is highly degenerate. Figure 5 shows a degenerate vertex of the spanning tree polytope
together with the tight constraints.
Notice that the constraint matrix corresponding to the spanning tree polytope is not
TU. Moreover, even if we only consider tight constraints, the resulting linear subsystem
may not be TU. A submatrix of the tight constraints having a determinant 6∈ {−1, 0, 1}
is highlighted in blue in Figure 5.
However, it turns out that for any vertex y of the spanning tree polytope, there is
always a full dimensional linear subsystem among the y-tight constraints, which is TU
and thus implies integrality of y. We will prove the existence of such a subsystem using
combinatorial uncrossing.
Let y ∈ P be a vertex of P . Without loss of generality, we delete from G = (V, E) all
edges {e ∈ E | y(e) = 0}, to obtain a smaller graph such that y restricted to {e ∈ E |
y(e) > 0} is still a vertex of the polytope P in the reduced graph. Hence, we assume from
now on that G is this reduced graph and therefore supp(y) = E.
Consider all y-tight, or simply tight, spanning tree (ST) constraints. Each tight ST
constraint x(E[S]) = |S| − 1 corresponds to some set S ⊆ V, |S| ≥ 2. We represent all
tight ST constraints by their corresponding set S, thus obtaining the family of tight sets
F given by
F = {S ⊆ V | |S| ≥ 1, y(E[S]) = |S| − 1}.
For technical reasons that will become clear later, we also include sets of size 1 in F.
Notice that they correspond to constraints that are trivially fulfilled.
Let H ⊆ F be a maximal laminar subfamily of F, and consider the system:

x(E[S]) = |S| − 1 ∀S ∈ H. (10)

We will show that y is the unique solution to (10). Notice that this will imply integrality
of y since (10) is a TU system with integral right-hand side, as it has the consecutive-ones
property with respect to the rows (see problem sets).
Since the set of all tight spanning tree constraints uniquely defines y, it suffices to show
that any tight spanning tree constraint is implied by (10), i.e.,

χE[S] is a linear combination of {χE[H] | H ∈ H} ∀S ∈ F. (11)

We showed in the problem sets in a very general context that (11) is indeed equivalent to
showing that every tight spanning tree constraint is implied by (10).
We start with an important structural property.

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Combinatorial Optimization Spring Term 2018 Rico Zenklusen

spanning tree constraints:

e1 e2 e3 e4 e5
   
{v1 , v2 } 0 0 0 0 0 1
   
v4 {v1 , v3 } 
 1 0 0 0 0 


 1 

{v1 , v4 } 
 0 1 0 0 0 


 1 

{v2 , v3 } 
 0 0 1 0 0



 1


e2 e5 e4 {v2 , v4 }
   

 0 0 0 1 0 
 = 
 1 

v3 {v3 , v4 } 
 0 0 0 0 1 y ≤ 
  1 

e1 e3 {v1 , v2 , v3 } 
 1 0 1 0 0 


 2 

v1 v2 {v1 , v2 , v4 }

 0 1 0 1 0



 2


   
{v1 , v3 , v4 }  1 1 0 0 1   2 
y = (1, 0, 1, 0, 1)
   
{v2 , v3 , v4 } 
 0 0 1 1 1 


 2 

{v1 , v2 , v3 , v4 } 1 1 1 1 1 3

nonnegativity constraints:

e1 e2 e3 e4 e5
   
1 0 0 0 0 0
   

 0 1 0 0 0 
 = 
 0 


 0 0 1 0 0 y ≥ 
  0 


 0 0 0 1 0 


 0 

0 0 0 0 1 0

Figure 5: The vector y is the incidence vector of the spanning tree {e1 , e3 , e5 }. Tight
spanning tree constraints (with respect to y) and tight nonnegativity constraints are
highlighted in red. There are 7 tight spanning tree constraints and 2 tight nonnegativ-
ity constraints. Hence, the vertex y of the spanning tree polytope is degenerate since
the total number of tight constraints, which is 9, is strictly larger then the dimension
in which y lives, i.e., 5. Furthermore, the constraint matrix that corresponds to only
the tight constraints is not TU. This can be verified by considering the subsystem of
the tight spanning tree constraints that correspond to the columns e1 , e3 , e5 and the
rows {v1 , v2 , v3 }, {v1 , v3 , v4 }, {v2 , v3 , v4 }, as highlighted in blue in the above figure.
The determinant of this 3 × 3 subsystem is −2.

Lemma 16. For any sets A, B ⊆ V , we have

χE[A] + χE[B] + χE(A\B,B\A) = χE[A∪B] + χE[A∩B] ,

which implies
χE[A] + χE[B] ≤ χE[A∪B] + χE[A∩B] .

Proof. In words, the equality in the lemma states that any edge e ∈ E appears the same
number of times in the edge sets E[A], E[B], E(A \ B, B \ A) as it appears in the sets
E[A ∪ B], E[A ∩ B]. One can easily check that Lemma (16) holds by verifying the equality
for each coordinate, i.e., each edge, where the edges can be grouped into the following edge
types. The type of an edge is determined by where its endpoints lie among the four sets
A \ B, B \ A, A ∩ B, E \ (A ∪ B). Figure 6 shows the 10 different edge types. Clearly, two

17
Combinatorial Optimization Spring Term 2018 Rico Zenklusen

edges of the same edge type have the same contribution to the left-hand side and right-
hand side of the equality in Lemma (16). Hence, it suffices to check whether each edge
type has the same contribution on each side of the equality, which is easy to observe.

Lemma 17. If S1 , S2 ∈ F with S1 ∩ S2 6= ∅, then S1 ∩ S2 , S1 ∪ S2 ∈ F and E(S1 \ S2 , S2 \

S1 ) = ∅. In particular, this implies by Lemma 16

χE[S1 ] + χE[S2 ] = χE[S1 ∪S2 ] + χE[S1 ∩S2 ] .

Proof. By Lemma 16 we have

y(E[S1 ]) + y(E[S2 ]) + y(E(S1 \ S2 , S2 \ S1 )) = y(E[S1 ∪ S2 ]) + y(E[S1 ∩ S2 ]). (12)

Using (12), we obtain

|S1 | + |S2 | − 2 = |S1 ∪ S2 | − 1 + |S1 ∩ S2 | − 1

| {z } | {z }
≥y(E[S1 ∪S2 ]) ≥y(E[S1 ∩S2 ])

≥ y(E[S1 ∪ S2 ]) + y(E[S1 ∩ S2 ]) (using y ∈ P )

= y(E[S1 ]) + y(E[S2 ]) +y(E(S1 \ S2 , S2 \ S1 )) (by (12))

| {z } | {z }
=|S1 |−1 =|S2 |−1

= |S1 | + |S2 | − 2 + y(E(S1 \ S2 , S2 \ S1 )) (because S1 , S2 ∈ F)

| {z }
≥0
≥ |S1 | + |S2 | − 2.

Hence, all inequalities above must be satisfied with equality, thus implying S1 ∪S2 , S1 ∩S2 ∈
F and y(E(S1 \S2 , S2 \S1 )) = 0. Finally, since y > 0, we have that y(E(S1 \S2 , S2 \S1 )) = 0
implies E(S1 \ S2 , S2 \ S1 ) = ∅, as desired.

A\B A∩B B\A

V \ (A ∪ B)

Figure 6: There are 10 types of edges as shown above. One can easily check that
each type appears precisely the same number of times in E[A ∪ B] and E[A ∩ B] as
it appears in E[A], E[B] and E(A \ B, B \ A).

Notice that for Lemma 17 we need F to contain singleton sets to cover the case
S1 , S2 ∈ F with |S1 ∩ S2 | = 1.
Two sets S1 , S2 ⊆ V are called intersecting if S1 ∩ S2 6= ∅, S1 \ S2 6= ∅, S2 \ S1 6= ∅.
Notice that a family of sets is laminar if and only if no two sets intersect.

18
Combinatorial Optimization Spring Term 2018 Rico Zenklusen

Lemma 18. The statement (11) holds and y is thus uniquely defined by the TU sys-
tem (10) and therefore integral.

Proof. Assume by the sake of contradiction that (11) does not hold. Let

Q = span({χE[H] | H ∈ H}) ⊆ RE .

Assuming (11) not to hold is thus equivalent to the existence of S ∈ F with χE[S] 6∈ Q.
Among all tight spanning tree constraints that violate (11), let S ∈ F be one such that

HS = {H ∈ H | S and H intersect}

has smallest size. Notice that HS 6= ∅, for otherwise we could have added S to H with-
out destroying laminarity of H, thus contradicting maximality of H. Let H ∈ HS . By
Lemma 17 we have S ∩ H, S ∪ H ∈ F and

χE[S] + χE[H] = χE[S∩H] + χE[S∪H] .

Notice that χE[S] 6∈ Q and χE[H] ∈ Q. Hence, at least one of χE[S∩H] , χE[S∪H] is not
in Q. However, we have

|HS∩H | < |HS | and

|HS∪H | < |HS |,

since there is no set in H that intersects any of the two sets S ∩ H or S ∪ H but not S.
Furthermore, the set H intersects S but not S ∩ H or S ∪ H. (See problem sets.) This
contradicts the choice of S.

2.2 Integrality of the dominant of the r-arborescence polytope

P = x ∈ RA  x(δ − (S)) ≥ 1 ∀S ⊆ V \ {r}, S 6= ∅. .
 
≥0

Let y ∈ P be a vertex of P . As for the spanning tree case, we can assume that the
underlying graph G = (V, A) has no arcs a ∈ A with y(a) = 0, since those arcs can be
removed and the restriction of y to its support is still a vertex in the polyhedron P that
corresponds to the reduced graph. We denote by F ⊆ 2V the set of all y-tight constraints:

F = {S ⊆ V \ {r} | y(δ − (S)) = 1}.

Hence, y is the unique solution to the linear system

x(δ − (S)) = 1 ∀S ∈ F. (13)

Let H ⊆ F be a maximal laminar subfamily of F. As in the spanning tree case, we

show that the following systems implies all constraints of (13)

x(δ − (S)) = 1 ∀S ∈ H. (14)

Again, the linear system (14) is TU, which can be seen by applying the Ghouila-Houri
criterion with respect to the rows as follows. Consider any subset of the rows, which can
be represented by a laminar subfamily F 0 ⊆ H. We partition this subfamily F 0 into a
’+’ and ’−’ group as follows. The topmost sets of F 0 , i.e., the ones not contained in any
other set of F 0 are in the ’+’ group, their children are in the ’−’ group, and we continue
alternating that way (see Figure 7). One can easily verify that this partition leads to a

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Combinatorial Optimization Spring Term 2018 Rico Zenklusen

+ +
− + − − −
v1 v2 v3 v4 v5 v6 v7 v8 v9 v10 v11 v12

Figure 7: Illustration of how we apply the Ghouila-Houri criterion to the subfamily

F 0 , which is the laminar family depicted in the figure.

vector with entries {−1, 0, 1} as desired. TU-ness of (14) also follows from results shown in
the problem sets, where we considered a system x(δ + (S)) for S being part of an arbitrary
laminar family. The system (14) easily reduces to this case by reversing the directions of
the arcs.
Hence, it remains to show that every constraint of (13) is implied by (14).

Lemma 19. For any two sets S1 , S2 ⊆ V , we have

− (S ) − (S ) − (S − (S ∪S )
1 ∩S2 )
χδ 1
+ χδ 2
= χδ + χδ 1 2
+ χA(S1 \S2 ,S2 \S1 ) + χA(S2 \S1 ,S1 \S2 ) ,

which implies in particular

− (S ) − (S ) − (S − (S ∪S )
1 ∩S2 )
χδ 1
+ χδ 2
≥ χδ + χδ 1 2
.

Proof. This proof can be done analogously to the proof of Lemma 16, by considering all
different arc types.

Lemma 20. If S1 , S2 ∈ F with S1 ∩ S2 6= ∅, then S1 ∪ S2 , S1 ∩ S2 ∈ F and A(S1 \ S2 , S2 \

S1 ) = ∅, A(S2 \ S1 , S1 \ S2 ) = ∅. In particular, this implies by Lemma 19
− (S − (S − (S ∪S ) − (S ∩S )
χδ 1)
+ χδ 2)
= χδ 1 2
+ χδ 1 2
.

Proof. By Lemma 19 and nonnegativity of y we have

y(δ − (S1 )) + y(δ − (S2 )) =

y(δ − (S1 ∪ S2 )) + y(δ − (S1 ∩ S2 )) + y(A(S1 \ S2 , S2 \ S1 )) + y(A(S2 \ S1 , S1 \ S2 )). (15)

Using (15), we obtain

2 = y(δ − (S1 )) + y(δ − (S2 ))

= y(δ − (S1 ∪ S2 )) + y(δ − (S1 ∩ S2 )) (by (15))

+ y(A(S1 \ S2 , S2 \ S1 )) + y(A(S2 \ S1 , S1 \ S2 ))
| {z } | {z }
≥0 ≥0
− −
≥ y(δ (S1 ∪ S2 )) + y(δ (S1 ∩ S2 ))
| {z } | {z }
≥1 ≥1
≥ 2. (because y ∈ P )

Hence, all inequalities above must be satisfied with equality, thus implying S1 ∪S2 , S1 ∩S2 ∈
F and y(A(S1 \ S2 , S2 \ S1 )) = y(A(S2 \ S1 , S1 \ S2 )) = 0. Finally, since y > 0, we have
A(S1 \ S2 , S2 \ S1 ) = A(S2 \ S1 , S1 \ S2 ) = ∅, as desired.

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Combinatorial Optimization Spring Term 2018 Rico Zenklusen

We are now ready to show that every constraint of (13) is implied by (14). Again, by
sake of contradiction assume that this is not the case. Let S ∈ F be a set such that the
constraint x(δ − (S)) = 1 is not implied by (14), and among all such sets we choose one
such that the number of sets in H that are intersecting with S is minimum. We define
− (H)
Q = span({χδ | H ∈ H}).
− (S)
Hence, S ∈ F satisfies χδ 6∈ Q. Let H ∈ H be a set such that S and H are intersecting.
By Lemma 20 we have
− − − (S∪H) − (S∩H)
χδ (S) + χδ (H) = χδ + χδ .
| {z } | {z }
6∈Q ∈Q
− −
Hence, at least one of χδ (S∪H) and χδ (S∩H) is not in Q. Since both S ∪ H and S ∩ H are
intersecting with a strictly smaller number of sets in H than S, this contradicts the choice
of S and finishes the proof, implying that each constraint of (13) is implied by (14).

2.3 Upper bound on number of edges of minimally k-edge-connected

graphs
Let G = (V, E) be an undirected graph on n vertices. We recall that G is k-edge-connected
for k ∈ Z≥0 if there are k edge-disjoint paths between any pair of vertices. By Menger’s
Theorem—a special case of the Max-Flow Min-Cut Theorem—this is equivalent to the
property that every cut S ( V, S 6= ∅ has size at least k, i.e., |δ(S)| ≥ k. G is called
minimally k-edge-connected if removing any edge from G leads to a graph that is not
k-edge-connected anymore. Hence, a graph is minimally k-edge-connected if and only
if each edge is in a cut of size k, which is the size of a minimum cut because G is k-
edge-connected. We are interested in determining the maximum number of edges that a
minimally k-edge-connected graph on n vertices can have.

v1 v2 v3 vn−1 vn

k parallel edges

Figure 8: Example of a minimally k-edge-connected graph with n vertices and k·(n−1)

edges.

Figure 8 shows an example of a minimally k-edge-connected graph with k · (n − 1)

edges. We will show that this number is tight using combinatorial uncrossing. The notion
of crossing sets is key in the proof.
Definition 21 (Crossing sets). Two sets S1 , S2 ⊆ V are called crossing if none of the
following sets is empty: S1 ∩ S2 , S1 \ S2 , S2 \ S1 , and V \ (S1 ∪ S2 ).
In other words, two sets S1 , S2 ⊆ V are crossing if they are intersecting and S1 ∪S2 6= V .
One key property of crossing sets is that their intersection and union can be interpreted
as cuts. (We recall that S ⊆ V is a cut if ∅ = 6 S 6= V .)

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Combinatorial Optimization Spring Term 2018 Rico Zenklusen

Lemma 22. Let G = (V, E) be a minimally k-edge-connected graph. Then |E| ≤ k · (|V | −
1).

Proof. We call a family H ⊆ 2V of minimum cuts in G a certifying family if each edge is in

at least one of them, i.e., for e ∈ E there is a cut S ∈ H such that e ∈ δ(S). We choose the
name certifying family because H certifies that the graph is minimally k-edge-connected.
Our goal is to construct a small certifying family H of size |H| ≤ n − 1. Notice that the
existence of such a small certifying family proves the lemma since E ⊆ ∪S∈H δ(S), and
thus |E| ≤ (n − 1) · k, because all cuts in H have size k since they are minimum.
Notice that for each cut S ⊆ V , also the set V \ S is a cut containing the same edges.
We can therefore choose an arbitrary vertex r ∈ V and focus only on minimum cuts not
containing r. An advantage of doing so, is that whenever two cuts not containing r are
intersecting, then they are also crossing.
To obtain H, we start with an arbitrary certifying family F ⊆ 2V , which can be
obtained as follows. For each e ∈ E, let

Ce = {S ⊆ V \ {r} | e ∈ δ(S), |δ(S)| = k}.

By minimality of G we have Ce = 6 ∅ for e ∈ E; for otherwise, e could be removed without

destroying k-edge-connectivity. For each e ∈ E, let Se ∈ Ce be an arbitrary cut in Ce . We
define
F = {Se | e ∈ E}.
Hence, F may contain up to |E| sets, but possibly less, since we may have Se = Se0 for
two different edges e, e0 ∈ E.
In the same way we proved Lemma 20 one can show that for any two minimum cuts
S1 , S2 in G that are crossing, also S1 ∪ S2 and S1 ∩ S2 are minimum cuts, and furthermore
E(S1 \ S2 , S2 \ S1 ) = ∅. Since all cuts in F are minimum, we can apply this reasoning
to any two cuts in F. We first want to turn F into a laminar certifying family. Assume
that F is not laminar. Hence, there are two intersecting cuts S1 , S2 ∈ F, which are also
crossing because r 6∈ S1 ∪ S2 .
Let
F 0 = (F \ {S1 , S2 }) ∪ {S1 ∪ S2 , S1 ∩ S2 }.
Thus, F 0 is still a family of minimum cuts. Furthermore, since E(S1 \ S2 , S2 \ S1 ) = ∅, we
have
δ(S1 ) ∪ δ(S2 ) = δ(S1 ∪ S2 ) ∪ δ(S1 ∩ S2 ).
Hence, F 0 is a certifying family. We claim that if we repeat this uncrossing procedure as
long as there are at least two intersecting cuts in our certifying family, we will eventually
end up with a laminar family of cuts. To see that this uncrossing procedure will stop, we
introduce a potential function φ for certifying families:
X
φ(F) = |S| · |S̄|,
S∈F

where S̄ = V \ S. Notice that for any two intersecting sets S1 , S2 ∈ F, we have

|S1 ||S1 | + |S2 ||S2 | > |S1 ∪ S2 ||S1 ∪ S2 | + |S1 ∩ S2 ||S1 ∩ S2 |. (16)

Hence, whenever we do uncrossing to go from a certifying family F to another one F 0 , we

have φ(F) > φ(F 0 ). Notice that the potential may even decrease more than by the slack
in the inequality (16), because the uncrossing may lead to sets that already exist in the

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Combinatorial Optimization Spring Term 2018 Rico Zenklusen

family, in which case also the size of the family decreases. In any case, the potential strictly
decreases after each uncrossing step. Since the potential is by definition nonnegative for
any certifying family and decreases by at least one unit at each step, the uncrossing
procedure must stop. Hence, there are no two intersecting sets in the final certifying
family L, and thus, L is laminar. Recall that a laminar family (not containing the empty
set) on a ground set of size n may still have up to 2n − 1 sets. Notice that since L is a
laminar family over the set V \ {r}, which has size n − 1, we actually have |L| ≤ 2n − 3.
We further purge the family L to obtain H0 as follows. As long as there is a set L ∈ L such
that the children L1 , . . . , Lk of L in the family L form a partition of L, then we remove the
set L from L. We call this constellation of sets L, L1 , . . . , Lk an obstruction. The resulting
family will still be a certifying family since any edgeScontained in δ(L) is also contained
in precisely one of the cuts L1 , . . . , Lk , i.e., δ(L) ⊆ ki=1 δ(Li ). Let H0 be the resulting
family, which does not contain any obstructions anymore. Notice that H0 is a laminar
family over V \ {r}. Every laminar family H0 on n − 1 elements without obstructions
satisfies |H0 | ≤ n − 1, since for each set H 0 ∈ H0 , there is an element of the ground set,
i.e., a vertex u ∈ V \ {r}, such that H 0 is the smallest set containing u. Thus, H0 can have
at most as many sets as there are elements in V \ {r}, which implies |H0 | ≤ n − 1 and
completes the proof.

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Combinatorial Optimization Spring Term 2018 Rico Zenklusen

3 Ellipsoid Method
The ellipsoid method is a procedure that can be used to solve in particular linear and, more
generally, convex optimization problems. We will focus on linear optimization problems
with a bounded feasible region, i.e., a polytope, since this is the most important use of
the ellipsoid algorithm in the context of combinatorial optimization. The problem setting
that is considered by the ellipsoid algorithm is the following.

Given a polytope P ⊆ Rn , find a point x ∈ P , or decide that P = ∅. (17)

To simplify the exposition, we assume that P is a full-dimensional polytope. As we will
discuss later, a linear programming problem over some (full-dimensional) polytope Q, i.e.,

max wT x
(18)
x∈Q

can be reduced to finding a point x ∈ P = Q ∩ {wT x ≥ b}.

A crucial advantage of the ellipsoid method compared to other methods for linear
programming, like the simplex algorithm or interior point methods, is that one does not
need an explicit facet description of the facets of P . More precisely, one only needs to be
able to solve an arguably simpler subproblem, known as the separation problem.

Separation problem
Given a point y ∈ Rn :
• Decide whether y ∈ P , and if this is not the case,
• find a non-zero vector c ∈ Rn such that P ⊆ {x ∈ Rn | cT x ≤ cT y}.

A procedure that solves the separation problem is often called a separation oracle. Fur-
thermore, a hyperplane H = {x ∈ Rn | cT x = α} with cT y ≥ α and P ⊆ {x ∈ Rn | cT x ≤
α} is called a separating hyperplane, or more precisely, a y-separating hyperplane. Notice
that the separation problem as we stated it above asks to find a separating hyperplane that
goes through y. However, any separating hyperplane H = {x ∈ Rn | cT x = α} can easily
be transformed into one that goes through y by considering H 0 = {x ∈ Rn | cT x = cT y}.
The fact that the ellipsoid algorithm is based on a separation oracle and does not
need a facet description allows it to solve in polynomial time many linear programs with
an exponential number of constraints. For example, one can use the ellipsoid method to
optimize any linear function over the matching polytope, and thus, in particular, one can
find a maximum weight matching via the ellipsoid method. The reason for this is that
even though the matching polytope has an exponential number of constraints, one can
construct a polynomial time separation oracle for it.
Additionally to a separation oracle for P , the ellipsoid algorithm also needs an ellipsoid
E0 that contains P . We recall that an ellipsoid is the image of the unit ball under an affine
bijection, which can be defined as follows.

Definition 23 (Ellipsoid). An ellipsoid in Rn is a set

E(a, A) := {x ∈ Rn | (x − a)T A−1 (x − a) ≤ 1},

where a ∈ Rn and A ∈ Rn×n is a positive definite matrix. The point a is called the center
of the ellipsoid E(a, A).

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Combinatorial Optimization Spring Term 2018 Rico Zenklusen

In particular, an ellipsoid is always full-dimensional. Notice that the above definition

of ellipsoid indeed corresponds to the image of the unit ball under an affine bijection. This
can be seen as follows. A matrix A ∈ Rn×n is positive definite if and only if there is a full
rank matrix Q ∈ Rn×n such that A = QQT . Hence, A−1 = (QT )−1 (Q−1 ) = (Q−1 )T Q−1 ,
and therefore

E(a, A) = {x ∈ Rn | kQ−1 (x − a)k2 ≤ 1}

= {y + a | y ∈ Rn , kQ−1 yk2 ≤ 1} (Substitution with y = x − a.)
n
= {Qz + a | z ∈ R , kzk2 ≤ 1}. (Substitution with z = Q−1 y.)

Figure 9 shows an example of an ellipsoid for n = 2.

2
a = ( 32 )
1
E(a, A) = E(( 32 ) , ( 40 01 ))
0
0 1 2 3 4 5

Figure 9: An example of an axis parallel ellipsoid E(a, A) in two dimensions. Notice

that the eigenvectors of A correspond to the axes of the ellipsoid, and the square roots
of the eigenvalues correspond to the radii of the corresponding axes.

The separation oracle for P and the ellipsoid E0 ⊇ P is all that is needed to run the
ellipsoid algorithm and obtain a point x ∈ P . However, to make sure that the ellipsoid
algorithm runs in polynomial time we need a further condition.One sufficient
 condition
vol(E0 )
for the ellipsoid algorithm to run in polynomial time is that log vol(P ) is polynomially
bounded in the input. We will see later that this holds for most cases we are interested in.

Description of ellipsoid method

The ellipsoid method is described in Algorithm 1.
Algorithm 1: Ellipsoid method
input : Separation oracle for a polytope P ⊆ Rn with dim(P ) = n, and an
ellipsoid E0 = E(a0 , A0 ) with P ⊆ E0 .
output: A point y ∈ P .
1 i = 0;
2 while ai 6∈ P (checked with separation oracle) do
3 Get non-zero c ∈ Rn such that P ⊆ {x ∈ Rn | cT x ≤ cT ai }, using sep. oracle;
4 Find min. volume ellipsoid Ei+1 = E(ai+1 , Ai+1 ) containing
Ei ∩ {x ∈ Rn | cT x ≤ cT ai };
5 i = i + 1;
6 return ai ;

We will soon give some more details on how to compute Ei+1 . It turns out that there
is a relatively simple way to describe Ei+1 in terms of Ei and c. Unfortunately, as we will
see soon, this description of Ei+1 involves taking a square root, which is an operation that

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Combinatorial Optimization Spring Term 2018 Rico Zenklusen

E(ai+1 , Ai+1 )
P

ai+1 {x ∈ Rn | cT x = cT ai }

ai
E(ai , Ai )

Figure 10: Illustration of a single iteration of the ellipsoid method. The polytope P
is inside each ellipsoid considered by the ellipsoid method.

we cannot perform up to arbitrary precision under the typical computational assumptions.

Hence, in practice, one only computes an ellipsoid Ei+10 that approximates Ei+1 and has a
polynomial-size description. To simplify the exposition we will not go into these numerical
details and assume that we use an exact description of Ei+1 .
Figure 10 illustrates one iteration of the ellipsoid method. Notice that we have P ⊆
Ei for each ellipsoid considered in the ellipsoid method. This can easily be verified by
induction. The first ellipsoid E0 contains P by assumption. Furthermore, for each iteration
i, P ⊆ {x ∈ Rn | cT x ≤ cT ai }, and hence P ⊆ Ei ∩ {x ∈ Rn | cT x ≤ cT ai }, since P ⊆ Ei .
We thus obtain P ⊆ Ei+1 because Ei ∩ {x ∈ Rn | cT x ≤ cT ai } ⊆ Ei+1 by definition of
Ei+1 .

Getting a bound on the number of iterations

The key property of the constructed ellipsoids, besides the fact that they contain P , is
that they shrink in terms of volume. More precisely, we have the following.

Lemma 24.
vol(Ei+1 ) − 1
< e 2(n+1) .
vol(Ei )
Before proving Lemma 24, we observe that it immediately implies an upper bound on
the number of iterations that the ellipsoid algorithm performs.
 
Lemma 25. The ellipsoid method will stop after at most 2(n + 1) ln vol(E 0)
vol(P ) iterations.

Proof. Let L ∈ Z≥0 be the last iteration of the ellipsoid algorithm. Since EL contains P ,
we must have vol(P ) ≤ vol(EL ) which, combined with Lemma 24, leads to
L
− 2(n+1)
vol(P ) ≤ vol(EL ) ≤ vol(E0 )e ,

and thus  
vol(E0 )
L ≤ 2(n + 1) ln .
vol(P )

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Combinatorial Optimization Spring Term 2018 Rico Zenklusen

In what follows, we will prove Lemma 24 and give an explicit description of the ellipsoid
Ei+1 . Later, we will show how the bound on the number of iterations given by Lemma 25
can be used to prove that the ellipsoid method runs in polynomial time for any {0, 1}-
polytope. For this we will first make the link between checking feasibility of a polytope
and optimizing an LP more explicit.

Proof of Lemma 24 and explicit description for Ei+1

A key simplification for proving Lemma 24 is to observe that it suffices to consider the
special case where Ei = E(0, I) is the unit ball and Hi = {x ∈ Rn | x1 ≥ 0}. As we show
next, one can reduce to this case by an appropriate affine transformation.

Lemma 26. Let Ei = E(ai , Ai ) be an ellipsoid and Hi = {x ∈ Rn | cT x ≤ cT ai } with

cT Ai c = 1 (this property of c can be achieved without loss of generality by scaling c).
Let HB = {x ∈ Rn | x1 ≥ 0}, and let EB be a minimum volume ellipsoid containing
E(0, I) ∩ HB . Let ρ : Rn → Rn be an affine bijection defined as follows:

ρ(x) = Qi Rx + ai ,

where Qi ∈ Rn×n is any matrix such that Ai = Qi QTi , and R is any orthogonal matrix
satisfying RT QTi c = −e1 , where e1 = (1, 0, . . . , 0) ∈ {0, 1}n is the vector with a single one
in the first coordinate and zeros everywhere else.
Then, ρ(E(0, I)) = Ei , ρ(HB ) = Hi , and ρ(EB ) is a minimum volume ellipsoid con-
taining Ei ∩ Hi .

Hence, Lemma 26 shows that to prove Lemma 24, it suffices to consider the unit ball
case cut by the hyperplane HB . Indeed, the ratio between a minimum volume ellipsoid
Ei+1 containing Ei ∩ Hi , and vol(Ei ) = vol(ρ(E(0, I))) is equal to

vol(Ei+1 ) vol(ρ(EB )) vol(EB )

= = , (19)
vol(Ei ) vol(ρ(E(0, I))) vol(E(0, I))

where the second equality follows by the fact that ρ scales the volumes of all measurable
sets by the same factor.
Also, the lemma provides an explicit transformation ρ that allows for transforming a
minimum volume ellipsoid for this special case into a minimum volume ellipsoid for the
general case. Later, we will use this transformation to give an explicit description of the
center ai+1 and defining matrix Ai+1 for the next ellipsoid Ei+1 = E(ai+1 , Ai+1 ) in the
ellipsoid method.
Notice that cT Ai c = 1 implies kQTi ck2 = 1, and hence, there is an orthogonal matrix
R that maps QTi c to −e1 . (Since an orthogonal transformation does not change lengths,
kQTi ck2 = 1 is necessary for R to exist.)

Proof of Lemma 26. The proof plan is as follows. We start by observing that ρ is a
bijection, ρ(E(0, I)) = Ei , and ρ(Hi ) = HB . Furthermore, applying ρ to any measurable
set changes its volume by a factor that only depends on ρ (a property that is well-known
for affine transformations). From these properties we can interpret the special case with
ball E(0, I) and halfspace HB as the preimage with respect to ρ of the original problem.
Since all volumes are scaled by the same factor, a minimum volume ellipsoid in the special
case thus corresponds to a minimum volume ellipsoid for the original problem.

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Combinatorial Optimization Spring Term 2018 Rico Zenklusen

The transformation ρ is indeed a bijection since R is full-rank and Qi is full-rank

because Ai = Qi QTi and Ai is full-rank. Furthermore,

ρ(E(0, I)) = {ρ(x) | xT x ≤ 1}

= {Qi Rx + ai | x ∈ Rn , xT x ≤ 1}
= y ∈ Rn | (y − ai )T (Q−1 T −1 −1

i ) RR Qi (y − ai ) ≤ 1 (y = Qi Rx + ai )
= y ∈ Rn | (y − ai )T A−1 (Qi QTi = Ai )

i (y − ai ) ≤ 1
= Ei .

Similarly, the hyperplane HB gets mapped to Hi :

ρ(HB ) = {ρ(x) | x ∈ Rn , x1 ≥ 0}
= {Qi Rx + ai | x ∈ Rn , x1 ≥ 0}
= {y ∈ Rn | (R−1 Q−1 T
i (y − ai )) e1 ≥ 0} (y = Qi Rx + ai )
n
= {y ∈ R | (y − ai ) T
(Q−1 T
i ) Re1 ≥ 0} (R−1 = RT by orthogonality of R)
= {y ∈ Rn | −(y − ai ) c ≥ 0}
T
(RT QTi c = −e1 )
= {y ∈ Rn | cT y ≤ cT ai }
= Hi .

Notice that the above relations combined with EB ⊇ E(0, I) ∩ HB imply that ρ(EB )
is indeed an ellipsoid that contains ρ(E(0, I)) ∩ ρ(HB ) = Ei ∩ Hi . It remains to show that
ρ(EB ) has minimum volume among all ellipsoid containing Ei ∩Hi . To prove this, let Ei+1
be a minimum volume ellipsoid containing Ei ∩Hi and we will show vol(Ei+1 ) ≥ vol(ρ(EB ))
to finish the proof.
We recall a well-known property of affine functions x 7→ Ax + v, namely that they
scale any volume by the same factor | det A|. For ρ this implies that for any measurable
set U ⊆ Rn we have

vol(ρ(U )) = vol(U ) · | det(Qi R)| = vol(U ) · | det Qi || det R| = vol(U ) · | det Qi |. (20)

Notice that ρ−1 (Ei+1 ) is an ellipsoid containing ρ−1 (Ei ) ∩ ρ−1 (Hi ) = E(0, I) ∩ HB ,
and hence
vol(ρ−1 (Ei+1 )) ≥ vol(EB ), (21)
because EB has minimum volume among all ellipsoid containing E(0, I) ∩ HB . We thus
obtain

vol(Ei+1 ) = vol(ρ−1 (Ei+1 )) · | det Qi | (by 20)

≥ vol(EB ) · | det Qi | (by 21)
= vol(ρ(EB )) (by 20),

thus completing the proof.

Lemma 27. Let HB = {x ∈ Rn | x1 ≥ 0}. Then the ellipsoid

  
 2  2 2 n
 n+1 1 n −1 X 
EB = x ∈ Rn  2

x1 − + x j ≤ 1 (22)
 n n+1 n2 
 j=2

contains E(0, I) ∩ HB .

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Combinatorial Optimization Spring Term 2018 Rico Zenklusen

The ellipsoid EB is actually even the minimum volume ellipsoid containing E(0, I) ∩
HB . We do not show this fact in these notes. (We will prove this in one of the exer-
cises.) However, we will show that the ratio vol(EB )/ vol(E(0, I)) satisfies the inequality
of Lemma 24. Of course, even without accepting that EB is the smallest ellipsoid contain-
ing E(0, I) ∩ HB , this shows Lemma 24. Furthermore, also in the analysis that follows,
we never need to prove that EB is the smallest ellipsoid containing E(0, I) ∩ HB , since we
can simply assume that, in the ellipsoid algorithm, we work with the description of EB
given by (22) without assuming that it has minimum volume. We will later generalize the
description of EB given in (22) to the general case when Ei is not necessarily the unit ball,
and HB is replaced by a general halfspace going through the center of Ei .

Proof of Lemma 27. Let x ∈ E(0, I) ∩ HB . We have

2  2 n
n2 − 1 X 2

n+1 1
x1 − + xj
n n+1 n2
j=2
n
n2 + 2n + 1 2 n + 1 2 2x1 n2 − 1 X 2
 
1
= x 1 − + + xj
n2 n n + 1 n2 n2
j=2
n
2n + 2 2 2n + 2 1 n2 −1X
= 2
x1 − 2
x1 + 2 + x2j (x ∈ Ei = E(0, I))
n n n n2
j=1
| {z }
≤1
2n + 2
≤ x1 (x1 − 1) +1 (0 ≤ x1 ≤ 1)
n2 | {z }
≤0
≤ 1,

and thus x ∈ EB .

Proof of Lemma 24. As discussed, we can assume due to Lemma 26 that Ei = E(0, I) is
the unit ball, and the separating hyperplane used in the ellipsoid algorithm at iteration i,
which goes through the center of Ei , is given by HB = {x ∈ Rn | x1 ≥ 0}. From (22) we
can read off the matrix Ai+1 and the center point ai+1 , which define the ellipsoid Ei+1 ,
i.e.,
Ei+1 = {x ∈ Rn | (x − ai+1 )T A−1
i+1 (x − ai+1 ) ≤ 1}.

We have
 T
1
ai+1 = , 0, 0, . . . , 0 ,
n+1
 
n+1 2
 ( n ) 0 0 ... 0 
n2 −1
 

 0 n2
0 ... 0 

A−1
 
i+1 = .. .. ,

 . . 


 0 

n2 −1
 
0 ... 0 n2

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Combinatorial Optimization Spring Term 2018 Rico Zenklusen

and thus

 
n 2
 ( n+1 ) 0 0 ... 0 
 
n2
0 0 ... 0
 
n2 −1
 
 
Ai+1 = .. .. .
 
 . . 
 

 0 

n2
0 ... 0
 
n2 −1

As we have seen, an ellipsoid E(a, A) is the image of the unit ball with respect to the
affine transformation φ(x) = Qx + a, where Q ∈ Rn×n is such that A = QQT . Thus
p
vol(E(a, A)) = vol(E(0, I)) · | det(Q)| = vol(E(0, I)) · det(A).

Hence,
p
vol(Ei+1 ) det(Ai+1 ) p
= p = det(Ai+1 )
vol(Ei ) det(I)
 n−1
n2

n 2
= 2
n+1 n −1
   n−1
1 1 2
= 1− 1+ 2
n+1 n −1
1 n−1 1 1 1
− 2(n+1)
< e− n+1 e 2(n2 −1) = e− n+1 e 2(n+1) = e , (1 + x < ex ∀x ∈ R \ {0})

as desired.

From the unit ball to the general case

In this section we discuss briefly how to get an explicit description of the ellipsoid Ei+1
in the general case, where Ei is not necessarily the unit ball, and the halfspace cutting Ei
is a general halfspace going through the origin ai of Ei . Getting an explicit description
of Ei+1 allows us to restate line 4 in the description of the ellipsoid algorithm given by
Algorithm 1 in an explicit way.
We perform the generalization in two steps. First, we still assume that Ei is the unit
ball. However, we consider an arbitrary halfspace cutting it. Then, we extend this case to
the general case.
An alternative way to get a description of Ei+1 and ai+1 is to derive an explicit affine
transformation that directly transforms the unit ball and halfspace {x ∈ Rn | x1 ≥ 0} to
a general ellipsoid and general halfspace going through its center.

General halfspace cutting Ei

Assume that Ei = E(0, I) is still the unit ball, and consider a general halfspace Hi = {x ∈
Rn | cT x ≤ 0}, where kck2 = 1, which can easily be achieved by scaling c. One can use an

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Combinatorial Optimization Spring Term 2018 Rico Zenklusen

orthogonal transformation to transform this case to the one where the halfspace is given
by {x ∈ Rn | x1 ≥ 0}. It is not hard to verify that this leads to an ellipsoid

Ei+1 = E(ai+1 , Ai+1 ), where

1
ai+1 = − c, and
n+1
n2
 
2 T
Ai+1 = 2 I− cc .
n −1 n+1

General case
Now let Ei = E(ai , Ai ) be a general ellipsoid, and let Hi = {x ∈ Rn | cT x ≤ cT ai } be a
general hyperplane going through the center ai of Ei . Since Ai is positive definite, there
is a matrix Qi ∈ Rn×n such that Ai = Qi QTi . Consider the affine bijective transformation
φ(x) = Qi x + ai and its inverse φ−1 (x) = Q−1
i (x − ai ). The function φ transforms E(0, I)
to Ei = E(ai , Ai ). Hence, we can first apply φ−1 to Ei and Hi to obtain Ei0 = E(0, I)
and Hi0 , then we can use our description of Ei+1 for the unit ball case, and finally, we
transform the found ellipsoid back using φ.
We start by describing the image of Hi under φ−1 to obtain Hi0 .

Hi0 = φ−1 (Hi ) = {Q−1 n T T

i (x − ai ) | x ∈ R , c x ≤ c ai }
= {y ∈ Rn | cT (Qi y + ai ) ≤ cT ai } (y = Q−1
i (x − ai ))
= {y ∈ Rn | cT Qi y ≤ 0}.

Hence, we have

Hi0 = {x ∈ Rn | dT x ≤ 0}, where

QT c QT c
d= q i =p i .
cT Qi QTi c cT Ai c

0
By the unit ball case discussed previously, the minimum volume ellipsoid Ei+1 that con-
0
tains E(0, I) ∩ Hi is given by
0
Ei+1 = E(a0i+1 , A0i+1 ), where
1
a0i+1 = − d, and
n+1
n2
 
0 2 T
Ai+1 = 2 I− dd .
n −1 n+1

Hence, the ellipsoid Ei+1 is given by

0
Ei+1 = φ(Ei+1 ) = {φ(x) | x ∈ Rn , (x − a0i+1 )T A0−1 0
i+1 (x − ai+1 ) ≤ 1}
= {y ∈ Rn | (Q−1 0 T 0−1 −1 0
i (y − ai ) − ai+1 ) Ai+1 (Qi (y − ai ) − ai+1 )} (y = φ(x) = Qi x + ai )
n
= {y ∈ R | (y − ai − Qi a0i+1 )T (Q−1 T 0−1 −1
i ) Ai+1 Qi (y − ai − Qi a0i+1 )}.

From this description we can derive a description of the center ai+1 and defining positive
definite matrix Ai+1 of Ei+1 = E(ai+1 , Ai+1 ). For simplicity of notation we define
Ai c
b= p = Qi d.
cT Ai c

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Combinatorial Optimization Spring Term 2018 Rico Zenklusen

We obtain,
1 1
ai+1 = ai + Qi a0i+1 = ai − Qi d = ai − b,
n+1 n+1

and

A−1 −1 T 0−1 −1
i+1 = (Qi ) Ai+1 Qi ,

which implies

n2
 
2
Ai+1 = Qi A0i+1 QTi = Ai − bbT .
n2 − 1 n+1

We can now restate the ellipsoid method as described in Algorithm 1 in a more explicit
form, by giving explicit formulas for how to compute Ei+1 . Notice that there is no need
to compute a Cholesky factorization of Ai .

Algorithm 2: Ellipsoid method

1 i = 0;
2 Let E0 = E(a0 , A0 ) be the description of the initial ellipsoid E0 ⊇ P ;
3 while ai 6∈ P (checked with separation oracle) do
4 Get non-zero c ∈ Rn such that P ⊆ {x ∈ Rn | cT x ≤ cT ai }, using sep. oracle;
5 Let b = √ATi c ;
c Ai c
1
6 Let ai+1 = ai − n+1 b;
n2 2 T
7 Let Ai+1 = n2 −1
(Ai − n+1 bb );
8 i = i + 1;
9 return ai ;

We recall that the square root that has to be taken for the calculation of b is an
operation that we cannot perform exactly under the usual computational assumptions.
Therefore, to obtain a working polynomial time version of the ellipsoid method, one typ-
ically only computes an approximate version of Ei+1 that still contains Ei ∩ Hi but is
slightly bigger than the minimum volume ellipsoid containing Ei ∩ Hi .

3.1 From checking feasibility to optimization over {0, 1}-polytopes

Even though the ellipsoid method works in a much more general context, we focus from
now on on the problem of maximizing a linear function w over a {0, 1}-polytope P . This
case is highly relevant in combinatorial optimization, and allows us to show nicely how
one can derive that the ellipsoid method runs in polynomial time on an interesting class
of LPs.
Without loss of generality we can assume w ∈ Zn , since any w ∈ Qn can be transformed
into an integral vector through scaling. We start by discussing how to obtain the optimal
value ν ∗ = max{wT x | x ∈ P } of the LP in polynomial time, before we provide details of
how this procedure can be used to also obtain an optimal vertex solution x∗ ∈ P .
Again, we assume that P is full-dimensional.

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Combinatorial Optimization Spring Term 2018 Rico Zenklusen

Getting the optimal LP value ν ∗

Let wmax = max{|wk | | k ∈ [n]}. Since P ⊆ Rn is a {0, 1}-polytope, there is an optimal
solution x∗ ∈ {0, 1}n , and since ν ∗ = wT x∗ , we have

ν ∗ ∈ [−nwmax , nwmax ].

To determine ν ∗ , we check the non-emptiness of a series of polytopes of the form

  
n  T
 1
P (ν) = P ∩ x ∈ R  w x ≥ ν − ,
2

where ν ∈ [−nwmax , nwmax ] ∩ Z. Notice that ν ∗ is the largest ν ∈ [−nwmax , nwmax ] ∩ Z

for which P (ν) is non-empty. Hence, we can find ν ∗ by performing a binary search over
ν ∈ [−nwmax , nwmax ]∩Z and checking non-emptiness of P (ν). This takes O(log(nwmax )) =
O(log n + log wmax ) iterations, which is polynomial in the input.
Notice that in the definition of P (ν), we are looking for solutions of value at least
ν − 21 , instead of simply looking for solutions of value ν. Adding the − 12 term guarantees
that P (ν) is either empty or full-dimensional. If we drop the − 21 term, then the polytope
P (ν ∗ ) is not full-dimensional anymore.
To show that ν ∗ can be computed in polynomial time via the ellipsoid method we
still need to prove that we can check non-emptiness of P (ν) in polynomial time for any
ν ∈ [−nwmax , nwmax ]∩Z. For this we have to specify what starting ellipsoid E0 we choose,
and we need to show that the ellipsoid method finds a point in P (ν) in a polynomial number
of iterations if P (ν) 6= ∅.

Starting ellipsoid E0 As the starting ellipsoid E0 , we choose the ball centered at

√
( 21 , . . . , 21 ) of radius 12 n, which is the smallest ball that contains [0, 1]n . Hence, P (ν) ⊆
[0, 1]n ⊆ E0 . The volume of E0 is
1 √ n
vol(E0 ) = ( n) vol(E(0, I)).
2n
We recall that the volume of the unit ball E(0, I) is given by

π n/2
vol(E(0, I)) = ≤ π n/2 ≤ 2n ,
Γ( n2 + 1)

where ΓR is the gamma function, which extends factorials to non-integers. It is given by

∞
Γ(z) = 0 tz−1 e−t dt. However, the crude upper bound vol(E(0, I)) ≤ 2n also immediately
follows by observing that E(0, I) ⊆ [−1, 1]n , and hence vol(E(0, I)) ≤ vol([−1, 1]n ) = 2n .
Thus,
log(vol(E0 )) = O(n log n).

Bounding the number of iterations To bound the number of iterations of the ellip-
soid method when applied to P (ν) we leverage Lemma 25, for which we need to show that
if P (ν) 6= ∅, then its volume is not too small. Hence, assume P (ν) 6= ∅, which implies
∃ y0 ∈ P (ν) ∩ {0, 1}n . (Actually, any optimal vertex solution to max{wT x | x ∈ P } can
be chosen as y0 .) Since P is assumed to be a full-dimensional {0, 1}-polytope, there are
furthermore points y1 , . . . , yn ∈ P ∩ {0, 1}n such that the simplex ∆ = conv({y0 , . . . , yn })
is full-dimensional. The points y1 , . . . , yn are not necessarily contained in P (ν). Therefore
we shrink the simplex ∆ towards the vertex y0 , to obtain a scaled-down simplex ∆0 which

33
Combinatorial Optimization Spring Term 2018 Rico Zenklusen

is fully contained in P (ν). We will then use vol(∆0 ) as a lower bound for vol(P (ν)). More
precisely, we show that it suffices to shrink ∆ by a factor of
1
α= .
2nwmax

The simplex ∆0 has as vertices y0 , and the following points z1 , . . . , zn :

zi = y0 + α(yi − y0 ) ∀i ∈ [n].

To show ∆0 = conv({y0 , z1 , . . . , zn }) ⊆ P (ν), we have to show that zi ∈ P (ν) for i ∈ [n],

which reduces to checking wT zi ≥ ν − 12 since zi ∈ P . This indeed holds:

1
wT zi = wT y0 +αwT (yi − y0 ) ≥ ν + αwT (yi − y0 ) (since wT y0 ≥ ν − and wT y0 ∈ Z)
| {z } 2
≥ν
1
≥ ν − αnwmax = ν − .
2
Hence, ∆0 ⊆ P (ν). Furthermore, since ∆0 is a scaled-down version of ∆, with scaling
factor α, we obtain
vol(∆0 ) = αn vol(∆).
1
Recall that the volume of a simplex in Rn is n! times the volume of the corresponding
parallelepiped. In particular, we obtain
1 1
vol(∆) = | det(y1 − y0 , . . . , yn − y0 )| ≥ ,
n! n!
since the matrix with columns yi − y0 is integral and non-singular because ∆ is full-
dimensional. Hence,
 n
0 n 1 1
vol(∆ ) = α vol(∆) ≥
2nwmax n!

and therefore

log(vol(P (ν))) ≥ log(vol(∆0 )) = −O(n log n + n log wmax ).

Hence, by Lemma 25 the number of iterations needed by the ellipsoid method to find a
point in P (ν) is at most
 
vol(E0 )

2(n + 1) ln = O n · [log(vol(E0 )) − log(vol(P (ν))]
vol(P (ν))
= O(n · (n log n + n log wmax ))
= O(n2 · (log n + log wmax )),

which is polynomial.
Thus, to check non-emptiness of P (ν) for an arbitrary ν ∈ Z, it suffices to run the
ellipsoid method for O(n2 · (log n + log wmax )) iterations. It will either find a point in P (ν),
which obviously shows non-emptiness of P (ν), or if no point in P (ν) is found over this
many iterations, then P (ν) = ∅.

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Combinatorial Optimization Spring Term 2018 Rico Zenklusen

Determining an optimal solution x∗

The above discussion shows that we can find with the ellipsoid method the optimal value
ν ∗ of any LP over a full-dimensional {0, 1}-polytope P . Furthermore, we also get a point
y ∈ P with wT y ≥ ν ∗ − 21 . However, especially in combinatorial optimization settings
we are interested in getting an optimal vertex solution x∗ ∈ P ∩ {0, 1}n , which typically
corresponds to some underlying discrete structure we are interested in. There are several
ways how this can be done.
One procedure that often works very efficiently, is to start with y and do local oper-
ations to obtain a vertex x with wT x ≥ wT y, which implies that x is an optimal vertex
solution. We do not go into details of this procedure, and present a conceptually simpler,
though often slower, approach that works in our setting and is efficient.
The idea of this approach to obtain an optimal vertex solution is to reduce the problem
of finding an optimal solution to a sequence of problems that ask to find only the optimal
value of an LP. Let S ⊆ [n]. Consider a modified objective function wS defined by
(
wi + 1 if i ∈ S,
wiS =
wi if i ∈ [n] \ S.

Optimizing with respect to wS allows for obtaining insights into an optimal solution using
the following result.

Lemma 28. Let S ⊆ [n]. The following two statements are equivalent.
(i) There is an optimal solution x∗ to max{wT x | x ∈ P } with x∗i = 1 for i ∈ S.
(ii) ν ∗ + |S| = max{(wS )T x | x ∈ P }.

Proof. By definition of wS , we have for any point y ∈ {0, 1}n ,

(wS )T y = wT y + |{i ∈ S | yi = 1}|.

Clearly, for any vertex y ∈ P , we have wT y ≤ ν ∗ with equality if and only if y ∗ is a

maximizer of max{wT x | x ∈ P }. Furthermore, we also have |{i ∈ S | yi = 1}| ≤ |S|.
This shows that max{(wS )T x | x ∈ P } ≤ ν ∗ + |S|, with equality if and only if there is a
vertex y ∈ P that maximizes max{wT x | x ∈ P } and with yi = 1 for i ∈ S, thus proving
the lemma.

Based on Lemma 28, we can construct an optimal solution coordinate by coordinate.

More precisely, we will determine among all optimal vertex solutions of max{wT x | x ∈
P } the lexicographically largest one x∗ = (x∗1 , . . . , x∗n ), i.e., for any other optimal vertex
solution y, there exists k = k(y) ∈ {0, . . . n − 1} such that yi = x∗i for i ∈ [k], and x∗k+1 = 1
whereas yk+1 = 0.
We construct x∗ iteratively. In the ith iteration we determine the value of x∗i . Assume
that we know the values of x∗1 , . . . , x∗i−1 for some i ∈ [n]. Let U = {j ∈ [i − 1] | x∗j = 1},
and define S = U ∪ {i}. Using Lemma 28 we can decide whether there is an optimal
solution z ∗ to max{wT x | x ∈ P } with zj∗ = 1 for j ∈ S. If this is the case, then x∗i = 1,
otherwise, x∗i = 0. Hence, after n iterations we obtain x∗ .
In summary, we obtain the following theorem.

Theorem 29. Let P ⊆ Rn be a full-dimensional {0, 1}-polytope for which we are given a
separation oracle. Furthermore, let w ∈ Zn . Then the ellipsoid method allows for finding
an optimal vertex solution to the linear program max{wT x | x ∈ P } using a polynomial
number of operations and calls to the separation oracle for P .

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Combinatorial Optimization Spring Term 2018 Rico Zenklusen

3.2 The non-full-dimensional case

It turns out that we can even apply the ellipsoid method to optimize a linear function
over a {0, 1}-polytope P that is not full-dimensional. We only give a rough outline how
this generalization can be achieved, without providing full details.
To simplify the explanation, assume that P is n − 1 dimensional. Hence, there is a
unique hyperplane H = {x ∈ Rn | g T x = b} such that P ⊆ H.
The ellipsoids constructed during the ellipsoid algorithm become more and more flat
over the iterations, since all of them contain P and their volumes shrink. After a well-
chosen number of iterations k of the ellipsoid algorithm, we consider the shortest axis
of the current ellipsoid Ek = E(ak , Ak ), which we denote by d ∈ Rn . Hence, d is the
eigenvector of Ak that corresponds to the smallest eigenvalue. Consider the hyperplane
F = {x ∈ Rn | dT x = dT ak }. Intuitively, we expect F to be “close” to H. Indeed,
if k is chosen well, one can round the coefficients of the hyperplane F to obtain the
hyperplane H. However, this rounding procedure is not straightforward, and is based on
an approximation algorithm to solve Simultaneous Diophantine Approximations. Once H
is obtained, one can reduce the problem to the affine subspace defined by H by eliminating
one of the coordinates using the equation provided by H. We therefore consider P to be
a polytope in the affine subspace defined by H. Since P is (n − 1)-dimensional in its
original description in Rn , we thereby obtain a full-dimensional polytope when removing
one variable of P . A similar argument as above, applied repeatedly, works when P has
dimension that is smaller than n − 1.
In summary we obtain the following stronger version of Theorem 29.
Theorem 30. Let P ⊆ Rn be a {0, 1}-polytope for which we are given a separation oracle.
Furthermore, let w ∈ Zn . Then the ellipsoid method allows for finding an optimal vertex
solution to the linear program max{wT x | x ∈ P } using a polynomial number of operations
and calls to the separation oracle for P .

3.3 Example applications

Minimum weight r-arborescence
Consider the problem of finding a minimum weight r-arborescence in a directed graph
G = (V, A) with nonnegative arc weights w : A → Z≥0 . Clearly, this problem is equivalent
to minimizing the linear function w over the dominant P of the r-arborescence polytope
which, by Theorem 13, is described by
−
  
A  x(δ (S)) ≥ 1 ∀S ⊆ V \ {r}, S 6= ∅

P = x∈R  .
x ≥ 0.

Strictly seen, we cannot apply Theorem 30 to P , since P is not a {0, 1}-polytope. More
precisely, P is not even a polytope since it is unbounded. This can easily be remedied by
intersecting P with the hypercube to obtain

Q = P ∩ [0, 1]A .

Since P is the dominant of a {0, 1}-polytope and we are minimizing a nonnegative linear
function, there is an optimal solution x∗ to min{wT x | x ∈ P } s.t. x∗ ∈ {0, 1}n . Hence,
x∗ ∈ Q. Furthermore, one can easily observe that Q is a {0, 1}-polytope. Thus, a minimum
r-arborescence can be found by finding a vertex solution to

min{wT x | x ∈ Q}. (23)

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Combinatorial Optimization Spring Term 2018 Rico Zenklusen

By Theorem 30, it suffices to find a polynomial-time separation oracle for Q to find an op-
timal vertex solution to (23). It therefore remains to design a polynomial-time separation
oracle for Q.
Hence, let y ∈ RA . We first check whether y ∈ [0, 1]A . This is easy to check since the
unit hypercube is defined by 2|A| constraints. If one of these constraints is violated, then
it immediately leads to a separating hyperplane. Hence, assume y ∈ [0, 1]A . It remains to
check whether one of the constraints x(δ − (S)) ≥ 1 for some S ⊆ V \ {r}, S 6= ∅ is violated.
This can be checked via minimum s-t cut computations. For each v ∈ V \ {r}, we compute
a minimum r-v cut Sv ⊆ V , where we use y as the capacities on the arcs. If one of these
cuts Sv has a value strictly less than 1, then the constraint corresponding to V \ Sv is
violated and leads to a separating hyperplane. Otherwise, if y(δ + (Sv )) ≥ 1 for all v ∈ V ,
then y satisfies all constraints of P and therefore y ∈ Q, because of the following. Assume
that there was a violated constraint, i.e., y(δ − (S)) < 1 for some S ⊆ V \ {r}, S 6= ∅. Then,
for any v ∈ S we have

y(δ + (Sv )) ≤ y(δ + (V \ S)) = y(δ − (S)) < 1,

where the first inequality follows from the fact that V \ S is an r-v cut, and its cut value
is thus at least as large as the value of the cut Sv , which is by definition a minimum r-v
cut.
This shows that we can solve the separation problem over Q, and thus, by Theorem 30,
we can find an optimal vertex solution to (23) in polynomial time through the ellipsoid
algorithm. Furthermore, as discussed above, such a vertex solution corresponds to a
minimum weight r-arborescence.

3.4 The other way around: from optimization to separation

The ellipsoid algorithm provides a way to do (linear) optimization using a separation
oracle, i.e., we can do optimization through separation. Interestingly, there are also ap-
proaches to solve the separation problem given an oracle for the optimization problem.
In this section we highlight some main ideas that underlie this relation. As in the ellip-
soid algorithm, there are some technical requirements that need to be fulfilled for this
approach to work. Still, this very strong relation between optimization and separation is
often simply referred to as the “equivalence between optimization and separation”.
Assume we want to solve the separation problem over a polytope P ⊆ Rn , and the
only way how we can access P is via an optimization oracle, which, for any c ∈ Rn , returns
an optimal solution to max{cT x | x ∈ P }. To do separation through optimization, we
define the so-called polar P ◦ of P , which is a polytope over which we can separate if we
can optimize over P . More formally, for any set X ⊆ Rn , we define its polar to be

X ◦ = {y ∈ Rn | xT y ≤ 1 ∀x ∈ X}.

Figure 11 shows the polar of a polytope P ⊆ R2 .

Given an optimization oracle for P , the following is a separation oracle for its polar
◦
P . Let y ∈ Rn . Obtain a maximizer z ∈ argmax{y T x | x ∈ P } using the optimization
oracle for P . If y T z ≤ 1, then y ∈ P ◦ , since for any x ∈ P we have xT y ≤ z T y ≤ 1.
Otherwise, {x ∈ Rn | z T x ≤ 1} is a halfspace separating y from P ◦ .
This simple observation together with some additional properties of the polar can
be used to separate also over P , in many natural settings. For this we first state some
properties of the polar.

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Combinatorial Optimization Spring Term 2018 Rico Zenklusen

P◦

Figure 11: A polytope P and its polar P ◦ .

Lemma 31. Let X ⊆ Rn be a compact (i.e., closed and bounded) convex set, containing
the origin in its interior. Then
(a) X ◦ is a compact convex set with the origin in its interior.
(b) (X ◦ )◦ = X.

Proof. (a) We start by showing that X ◦ is convex and compact. X ◦ is clearly convex and
closed since it is the intersection of halfspaces. To show boundedness of X ◦ , notice
that since the origin is in the interior of X, there exists δ > 0 such that B(0, δ) ⊆ X,
where B(0, δ) is the closed ball of radius δ that is centered at the origin. We show
boundedness of X ◦ by showing that X ◦ ⊆ B(0, 1/δ). Indeed, for any y ∈ Rn with
y
kyk2 > 1δ , we obtain xT y > 1 where x = δ · kyk 2
∈ B(0, δ) ⊆ X; hence, y 6∈ X ◦ .
It remains to show that the origin is in the interior of X ◦ . Since X is bounded, there
exists some M > 0 such that X ⊆ B(0, M ). We complete this part of the proof by
showing B(0, M 1
) ⊆ X ◦ . Let y ∈ B(0, M 1
), and we will show that y does not violate
◦
any constraint in the description of X . Indeed, for any x ∈ X ⊆ B(0, M ), we obtain

y T x ≤ kyk2 kxk2 ≤ 1,
|{z} | {z }
≤1/M ≤M

and hence y ∈ X ◦ .
(b) We clearly have X ⊆ (X ◦ )◦ , since for any x ∈ X and y ∈ X ◦ we have xT y ≤ 1. Thus,
x fulfills all the constrains of (X ◦ )◦ .
To show (X ◦ )◦ ⊆ X, assume by contradiction that ∃z ∈ (X ◦ )◦ \ X. Since X is convex
and closed, there is a hyperplane separating z from X, i.e., there is c ∈ Rn \ {0} and
b ∈ R such that cT x ≤ b ∀x ∈ X and cT z > b. Notice that b > 0 since the origin is in

38
Combinatorial Optimization Spring Term 2018 Rico Zenklusen

the interior of X. Let y = 1b c. We have y ∈ X ◦ , since for any x ∈ X,

1
xT y = xT c ≤ 1.
b
However, y ∈ X ◦ implies z 6∈ (X ◦ )◦ since
1
y T z = cT z > 1,
b
which contradicts the assumption z ∈ (X ◦ )◦ .

Lemma 32. Let P ⊆ Rn be a polytope containing the origin in its interior. Let x ∈ Rn .
Then

x is a vertex of P ⇔ {y ∈ Rn | xT y ≤ 1} is facet-defining for P ◦ .

Proof. Let
Q = {y ∈ Rn | xT y ≤ 1 ∀x vertex of P }.
⇐) Notice that this direction of the statement is equivalent to P ◦ = Q. We clearly
have P ◦ ⊆ Q. To show Q ⊆ P ◦ , consider a point y ∈ Q. We will show y ∈ P ◦ by showing
that xT y ≤ 1 for all x ∈ P . Hence, let x ∈ P . Since
P P is a polytope, x can be written
as a convex combination of its vertices, i.e., x = ki=1 λi xi , where xi is a vertex of P for
i ∈ [k], ki=1 λi = 1, and λi ≥ 0 ∀i ∈ [k]. Thus,
P

k
X k
X
T
x y= λi xTi y ≤ λi = 1,
i=1 i=1

as desired, where the inequality follows from xTi y ≤ 1 ∀i ∈ [k] since y ∈ Q.

⇒) Let x1 , . . . , xk be the vertices of P . We will show that {y ∈ Rn | xTk y ≤ 1} is facet-
defining for P ◦ . As shown in the first part, we have P ◦ = Q := {y ∈ Rn | xTi y ≤ 1 ∀i ∈ [k]}.
Hence, we have to show that {y ∈ Rn | xTk y ≤ 1} is facet-defining for Q.
Assume for the sake of contradiction that {y ∈ Rn | xTk y ≤ 1} is not facet-defining for
Q. Hence, the constraint xTk y ≤ 1 is implied by the constraints xTi y ≤ 1 for i ∈ [k − 1],
i.e., a conic combination of the constraints xTi y ≤ 1 for i ∈ [k − 1] leads to the constraint
xTk y ≤ α for some α ≤ 1. Formally, this means that there are multipliers λi ≥ 0 for
i ∈ [k − 1] such that
k−1
X
λi xi = xk , and
i=1
k−1
X
λi ≤ 1.
i=1

However, this implies that xk is a convex combination of x1 , . . . , xk−1 and the origin.
Moreover, notice that xk is different from x1 , . . . , xk−1 , and xk is not the origin, because
xk is a vertex of P and the origin is in the interior of P and thus cannot be a vertex of
P . In other words, xk is a nontrivial convex combination of other points in P , namely
x1 , . . . , xk−1 and the origin. This contradicts the fact of xk being a vertex of P .

39
Combinatorial Optimization Spring Term 2018 Rico Zenklusen

Based on the above results, there is a natural strategy to construct a separation oracle
for some polytope P ⊆ Rn that contains the origin in its interior. Notice that if P is
full-dimensional, there is always a way to translate P such that it contains the origin in
its interior. As discussed, an optimization oracle for P implies a separation oracle for
P ◦ . Now, if the technical requirements are fulfilled to apply the ellipsoid algorithm to
P ◦ , we can use this separation oracle to optimize over P ◦ . Finally, an optimization oracle
for P ◦ implies a separation oracle for (P ◦ )◦ = P . Furthermore, Lemma 32 implies that
if the optimization oracle always returns a vertex solution, then the separation oracle
constructed with the above approach does not just return any separating hyperplane, but
even one that is facet-defining.
Figure 12 summarizes this interplay between optimization and separation through the
polar.

ellipsoid
Optimization over P Separation over P

polarity and
polarity
(P ◦ )◦ = P

Separation over P ◦ Optimization over P ◦

ellipsoid

Figure 12: A graphical representation of the relation between optimization and sep-
aration via the ellipsoid algorithm and polar polytopes.

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