  | 
 
        Semidefinite Programming and Interior-Point Approaches for Combinatorial 
          Optimization Problems
        
 
        Titles and/or Abstracts for 
           
           May 15- Friday 17, 1996  
          (before the SIAM Conference on Optimization in Victoria)  
        to be held The Fields Institute, Toronto, Ontario, Canada 
         List of Speakers 
        
          - Yakov Alber 
          
 - Arjan Berkelaar (speaker) and Shuzhong Zhang 
          
 - Dimitris Bertsimas 
          
 - Ding-Zhu Du 
          
 - M. R. Emamy-K. 
          
 - Leonid Faybusovich 
          
 - Jun Gu 
          
 - Christoph Helmberg (speaker), Franz Rendl, R. Weismantel  
          
 - Charles Johnson  
          
 - Stefan Karisch (speaker) and Franz Rendl  
          
 - Philip Klein and Hsueh-I Lu (speaker) 
          
 - Kees Roos , Tamas Terlaky, Etienne de Klerk (speaker) 
          
 - Monique Laurent 
          
 - LE THI Hoai An (speaker) and PHAM DINH Tao 
          
 - Chih-Jen Lin and Romesh Saigal (speaker) 
          
 - Zhi-Quan Luo (speaker), Jos F. Sturm and Shuzhong Zhang  
          
 - Borin Mirkin  
          
 - John E. Mitchell  
          
 - Jonas MOCKUS, Audris MOCKUS, and Linas MOCKUS (speaker) 
          
 - Renato Monteiro 
          
 - Manuel A. Nunez (speaker) and Robert M. Freund 
          
 - Laura Palagi (speaker) and Stefano Lucidi 
          
 - Panos Pardalos and Mauricio G.C. Resende (speaker) 
          
 - Gabor Pataki 
          
 - PHAM DINH Tao (speaker) and LE THI Hoai An  
          
 - Lorant Porkolab (speaker) and Leonid Khachiyan  
          
 - M. Ramana 
          
 - Franz Rendl (speaker) and Christoph Helmberg 
          
 - Kees Roos (speaker), Tamas Terlaky, Etienne de Klerk 
          
 - Alexander Shapiro 
          
 - D. Goldfarb and Katya Scheinberg (speaker) 
          
 - Jos F. Sturm (speaker), Zhi-Quan Luo, and Shuzhong Zhang  
          
 - J.P. Warners, Tamas Terlaky(speaker), C. Roos, B. Jansen 
          
 - Michael J. Todd (speaker), Kim Chuan Toh, Reha H. Tutuncu 
          
 - Lieven 
            Vandenberghe (speaker), Stephen Boyd, Shao-Po Wu 
          
 - Yinyu Ye 
          
 - Shuzhong 
            Zhang (speaker) and Jos F. Sturm 
          
 - Yin Zhang  
          
 - Qing Zhao (speaker), Stefan E. Karisch, Franz Rend, and Henry Wolkowicz 
            
 
         
        
        
        
           
            
              
               
               
              Ya. I. Alber 
              Haifa Technion 
              Department of Mathematics 
              Haifa, Israel 
              Visiting Professor in IMPA 
              (Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 
              alberya@impa.br 
            
             
            The analysis of a convergence, stability and estimates of convergence 
            rate of iterative methods of optimization, is usually organized by 
            the following way. The suitable Lyapunov function $W(.)$ is constructed, 
            and a link between its values on two successive iterations $W_n$ and 
            $W_(n+1)$ is established. Therefore it is used some information about 
            parameters of the process $\alpha_n, \beta_n,...,$ about errors of 
            different subjects - for example, functional, its gradient or subgradient, 
            set of constrains, etc. - $\gama_n$, and additional information about 
            the nature of the degeneration of the problem, described by means 
            of nonlinear function $\Psi_1(W)$; smoothness is described by $\Psi_2(W)$. 
            In general case, this recurrent link is represented as the following: 
            (*) W_{n+1} \leq (1+\beta_n) W_n - \alpha_n \Psi(W_n) + \gama_n, n=1,2,... 
            In the talk, the results of studying such inequalities, including 
            a convergence of $W_n$ to nought and nonasymptotic estimates of the 
            convergence rate: $W_n \leq \Hi(n) -> 0$ are going to be revealed. 
            The results of investigation of (*), with conditions of the complete 
            lack of information about uniform degeneration's character, are going 
            to be presented for the first time. I will pay a special attention 
            to applications of those results to the problems of nonlinear and 
            stochastic programming and approximation, variational inequalities 
            and complementarity problems. 
             
          -  
            
              Convergence Issues and Path-following Algorithms 
              for Semidefinite Programmin
              
              Arjan Berkelaar (speaker) and Shuzhong Zhang  
              Econometric Institute 
              Erasmus University Rotterdam 
              P.O. Box 1738, 3000 DR Rotterdam 
              The Netherlands  
              Recently, Kojima, Shindoh and Hara \cite{KoShHa:94} proposed a family 
              of primal--dual interior--point algorithms for the monotone semidefinite 
              linear complementarity problem. These algorithms were further analyzed 
              by Monteiro \cite{sdp:Monteiro}, who presented a polynomially convergent 
              long--step path--following algorithm for semidefinite programming. 
              In this presentation we will discuss some convergence issues related 
              to these algorithms. 
                
             
            
            
              
               
               
              Dimitris Bertsimas 
              E52-436 
              School Of Mgmt 
              MIT 
              Cambridge, MA 02139 
              (617) 253-4223 
              DBERTSIM@ARIS,MIT.EDU 
            
             
            Starting from physical (conservation) laws for stochastic and dynamic 
            optimization problems arising in manufacturing and communication systems 
            we propose linear and semidefinite relaxations that provide bounds 
            for this class of problems. We further propose near-optimal policies 
            using ideas from infinite linear programming and control theory. Our 
            algorithm solves large scale problems very efficiently. 
             
           
            
              
               
               
              Ding-zhu Du 
              Department Of Computer Science 
              Institute Of Technology 
              4-192 EE/CS Building 
              Minneapolis MN 55455-0159 
              U.S.A. 
              fax no.: 612 6250572 
              phone no.: 612 6254002 
              E-mail: dzd@cs.umn.edu 
            
             
            In this paper, we study a problem with application in VLSI design. 
            The problem is formulated as a 0-1 integer programming. We found an 
            interesting polynomial-time approximation by relaxation method. Both 
            theoretical and computational results will be presented. 
             
           
            
              How efficient can we maximize threshold 
                pseudo-Boolean functions ? 
               
              M. R. Emamy-K. 
              Departments of Mathematics 
              Box 23355  
              University of Puerto Rico 
              Rio Piedras 00931  
               
            
             
            A well-known open problem posed by P. L. Hammer et. al. as follows: 
            Is there an algorithm that maximizes threshold pseudo-Boolean functions 
            in a polynomial number of steps ?  
            Even though the general problem remains to be open, here we talk about 
            different subclasses of threshold pseudo-Boolean functions for which 
            such polynomial algorithm exists. 
             
           
            
              Infinite-dimensional semidefinite programming:self-concordant 
                barriers and path-following algorithms. 
               
              Leonid Faybusovich, 
              Notre Dame University 
               
            
             
            We discuss possible approaches to generalizations of the semidefinite 
            programming in the more general context of an infinite-dimensional 
            version of the Nesterov-Nemirovsky scheme. Examples of (infinite-dimensional) 
            operator domains descibed by semidefinite constraints for which there 
            exist self-concordant barriers are presented. Path-following algoriths 
            are considered. 
             
           
            
              Parallel Algorithms for Satisfiability (SAT) 
                Problem 
               
              Jun Gu, Hong Kong Univ. of Science 
              and Technology  
            
             
            The satisfiability (SAT) problem is a central problem in mathematical 
            logic, computing theory, and artificial intelligence. In practice, 
            the SAT problem is fundamental in solving many practical application 
            problems. Methods to solve the SAT problem play an important role 
            in the development of computing theory and intelligent computing systems. 
            There has been great interest in the design of efficient algorithms 
            to solve the SAT problem. Since the past decade, a variety of parallel 
            processing techniques have been developed to solve the SAT problem. 
            The goal of this paper is to expose the rapidly growing field, to 
            discuss tradeoff and limitations, and to describe ten state-of-the-art 
            techniques, both algorithms and special-purpose architectures, for 
            parallel processing of the satisfiability problem. 
             
           
            
              Quadratic Knapsack Relaxations Using Cutting 
                Planes and Semidefinite Programming 
               
              Christoph Helmberg (speaker), Franz 
              Rendl, R. Weismantel (University of Graz) 
            
             
            The quadratic knapsack problem is the easiest case of constrained 
            0/1 quadratic programming and is extremely difficult to solve by linear 
            programming alone. Semidefinite programming is well known to provide 
            powerful relaxations for quadratic 0/1 programming and, as we intend 
            to show, it is very useful for quadratic knapsack problems as well. 
            We compare several possibilities for setting up initial relaxations 
            and show that in the special case of linear cost functions some are 
            even better than the canonical linear relaxation. We discuss possible 
            strengthenings of these relaxations by polyhedral cutting plane approaches 
            in theory and in practice. The main practical difficulty with semidefinite 
            approaches is the high computational cost involved. These stem from 
            the factorization of a completely dense symmetric positive definite 
            matrix with dimension equal to the number of constraints. To keep 
            the number of constraints small it is of major importance to understand 
            the interaction and dominance relations between different classes 
            of cuts. We give several theoretical results in this direction. Finally, 
            we present computational results of this approach on practical data. 
             
           
            
              Recent Progress on Matrix Completion 
                problems 
               
              Charles R. Johnson, College 
              of William and Mary 
            
             
            A matrix completion problem asks under what circumstances a partial 
            matrix has a completion of a desired type. Theory associated with 
            the positive definite and related completion problems is the most 
            well developed. For example, if the pattern of specified off-diagonal 
            entries corresponds to a chordal graph, then there are simple formulas 
            for optimal completions; and, if not, simple formulas do not exist, 
            but there are computational techniques, including important ones based 
            upon semidefinite programming. Here, we discuss analogous progress 
            on other completion problems, such as those for totally positive matrices, 
            P-matrices, inverse M-matrices, completely positive and doubly nonnegative 
            matrices. 
             
           
            
              Semidefinite Programming and Graph Equipartition 
                
               
              Stefan Karisch 
              (speaker) and Franz Rendl (University of Graz) 
            
             
            Semidefinite relaxations are used to approximate the problem of partitioning 
            a graph into equally sized components. The relaxations extend previous 
            models, and combine semidefinite and polyhedral approaches. Theoretical 
            comparisons with other bounds for the graph equipartition problem 
            based on continuous relaxations are investigated. We show that certain 
            semidefinite relaxations coincide with eigenvalue approaches proposed 
            in the literature. We also discuss algorithmic and computational aspects. 
            Numerical results on graphs with several hundred vertices are given, 
            and indicate that semidefinite relaxations approximate the equipartition 
            problem quite well.  
             
           
            
              Approximation algorithms for semidefinite 
                programs arising from MAX CUT and COLORING 
               
              Philip Klein and Hsueh-I Lu (speaker) (Brown University) 
            
             
            Linear programming has proved a useful tool in the design of approximation 
            algorithms. Goemans and Williamson showed (1994) that a more general 
            kind of mathematical programming, namely semidefinite programming, 
            is similarly useful; they gave an approximation algorithms for MAX 
            CUT that depends on solving a semidefinite program. Karger, Motwani, 
            and Sudan then showed (1994) a similar approach yields an approximation 
            algorithm for graph coloring. In each of these algorithms, the computational 
            bottleneck is solving the semidefinite program. We show that for constant 
            $\epsilon$ a $(1+\epsilon)$-approximate solution to these programs 
            can be obtained in $O(n m \log^3 n)$, where $n$ is the number of nodes 
            and $m$ is the number of edges. 
             
           
            
              Method of approximate centers for semidefinite 
                programming 
               
              Kees Roos, Tamas Terlaky, Etienne de Klerk (speaker) 
               
              Faculty of Technical Mathematics and Informatics 
              Delft University of Technology 
              P.O. Box 5031, 2600 GA Delft, The Netherlands 
              e--mail 
              E.deKlerk@twi.tudelft.nl 
              C.Roos@twi.tudelft.nl 
              T.Terlaky@twi.tudelft.nl 
            
             
            The success of interior point methods for large--scale linear programming 
            (LP) has prompted researchers to extend these algorithms to semidefinite 
            programming (SDP). In this presentation we extend the method of approximate 
            centers of Roos and Vial to SDP. It is a short--step, path--following, 
            primal algorithm, and the extention from LP to SDP is surprisingly 
            straightforward and elegant. The search direction is shown to be a 
            projection of the scaled Newton direction of the primal barrier function. 
             
           
            
              A connection between positive semidefinite 
                and Euclidean distance matrix completion problems 
               
              Monique Laurent 
              Liens 
              Ecole Normale Superieure 
              45 ru d'Ulm 
              75230 Paris Cedex 05, France 
              laurent@dmi.ens.fr 
            
             
            The positive semidefinite and Euclidean distance matrix completion 
            problems have received a lot of attention in the literature. Interestingly, 
            results have been obtained for these two problems that are very similar 
            in their formulations. Although there is a strong relationship between 
            positive semidefinite matrices and Euclidean distance matrices, it 
            was not clear how to link the two completion problems. We show how 
            the results for the Euclidean distance matrix completion problem can 
            be derived from the corresponding results for the positive semidefinite 
            completion problem, using a functional transform introduced by Schoenberg. 
             
           
            
              An efficient adapted DCA & Branch-and-Bound 
                algorithm for globally solving large-scale 0-1 quadratic programming 
                problems 
               
              LE THI Hoai An (speaker) 
              \& PHAM DINH Tao 
              Mathematical Modelling and Applied Optimization Group  
              LMI-INSA Rouen - CNRS URA 1378.  
              BP 08 76131 Mont Saint Aignan, France 
              lethi@insa-rouen.fr  
              pham@insa-rouen.fr 
            
             
            We are interested in solving the well-known 0-1 quadratic programming 
            \[\alpha = \min \{ \frac{1}{2} x^T Qx + q^Tx: \: Ax \leq b, \: x \in 
            \{0,1\}^n\} \quad (1)\] by applying a combined DCA \& Branch-and-Bound 
            algorithm (in a continuous approach) to the following equivalent nonconvex 
            problem \[\alpha = \min \{ \frac{1}{2} x^T (Q-tI)x + (q+(t/2)e)^T 
            x: \: Ax \leq b, \: x \in [0,1]^n\} \quad (2) \] where $e$ is the 
            vector of ones and $t \geq t_o >0$. We use rectangular bisection 
            in the branching procedure while the bounding one proceeds by applying 
            DCA to (2) from the current best feasible point (for the upper bound) 
            and by minimizing a well tightened convex underestimation of the objective 
            function on the current subdivided domain (for the lower bound). As 
            for DCA ("difference of convex function" optimization algorithm) introduced 
            by PHAM DINH Tao, it is an efficient local algorithm which produces 
            quite often a global solution. Finally we present numerical results 
            for several test problems (0-1 Knapsack problem, Set Covering and 
            set Packing problems, Facility location problem...) which prove the 
            efficiency of our method. 
             
           
            
              An infeasible start predictor corrector 
                method for semidefinite linear programming 
               
              Chih-Jen Lin and Romesh Saigal (speaker) 
              (University of Michigan) 
            
             
            This talk will consider an infeasible start predictor corrector pathfollowing 
            method for the semidefinite programming problem. The method will be 
            shown to converge globally. We do not assume that the dual pair of 
            semidefinite linear programs have feasible solutions and in a finite 
            and polynomial number of steps discover if they have no optimum solution 
            with duality gap zero in a well defined bounded region. The method, 
            starting with the initial vectors determined by $\rho$, in at most 
            $O(\mbox{log}(\frac{\delta\rho}{\epsilon}n)$ predictor and corrector 
            steps will discover either that there are no optimal solutions with 
            duality gap zero in a well defined bounded region determined by $\rho$ 
            or find a pair of solutions which satisfy approximately the constraints, 
            the approximation and duality gap determined by $\epsilon$. Here $\delta$ 
            is a polynomial function of the data. We also present some computational 
            experience with this method. 
             
           
            
              Superlinear Convergence of a Symmetric Primal-Dual 
                Path Following Algorithm for Semidefinite Programming  
                ps file is available 
               
              Zhi-Quan Luo (speaker) 
              (McMaster Univ.) 
              Jos F. Sturm and Shuzhong Zhang, Erasmus University Rotterdam 
               
            
             
            This paper establishes the superlinear convergence of a symmetric 
            primal-dual path-following algorithm for semidefinite programming 
            under the sole assumption that the semidefinite program has a strictly 
            complementary primal-dual optimal solution. The interior point algorithm 
            considered here closely resembles the Mizuno-Todd-Ye predictor-corrector 
            method for linear programming which is known to be quadratically convergent. 
            It is shown that when the iterates are well centered the duality gap 
            is reduced superlinearly after each predictor step. In fact, if each 
            predictor step is succeeded by $r$ consecutive corrector steps then 
            the predictor reduces the duality gap at a superlinear rate of $\frac{2}{1+2^{-2r}}$. 
            The proof relies on a careful analysis of the central path for semidefinite 
            programming. It is shown that under the strict complementarity assumption, 
            the primal-dual central path converges to the analytic center of the 
            primal-dual optimal face, and the distance from any point on the central 
            path to this analytic center is bounded by the duality gap. 
             
           
            
              Approximation Clustering: A Mine of Semidefinite 
                Programming Problems 
               
              Boris Mirkin 
              DIMACS, Rutgers University, USA 
              and CEMI, Moscow, Russia 
              mirkin@dimacs.rutgers.edu  
            
             
            Approximation clustering is a set of clustering models and methods 
            based on approximate decomposing the data table through scalar product 
            matrices representing weighted subsets, partitions or hierarchies 
            as the sought clustering structures. Both crisp and fuzzy structures 
            can be considered. In this framework, the following research subjects 
            seem of particular interest: (1) developing clustering models that 
            are adequate statistical models for substantive problems; (2) analyzing 
            relations between approximation clustering and other data analysis 
            approaches (first af all, the genuine cluster analysis techniques); 
            (3) analyzing and solving the corresponding optimization problems. 
            A dozen of approximation clustering optimization problems will be 
            reviewed, mostly in the framework of SEFIT, a doubly greedy optimization 
            strategy developed by the author as fitting into traditional clustering. 
            Some of the problems are quite known as multi-min-cut and maximum-density-subgraph, 
            the others are unstudied at all, even those quite similar to the classical 
            ones. 
             
           
            
              Using an Interior Point Algorithm in 
                a Cutting Plane Method for Solving Integer Programming Problems 
                
               
              John E. Mitchell 
              Amos Eaton 325 
              Math Sciences 
              Rensselaer (RPI) 
              Troy NY 12180 USA 
              Phone: (518) 276-6915  
              Fax: (518) 276-4824  
              Email: mitchj@rpi.edu 
              WWW: http://www.math.rpi.edu/~mitchj  
            
             
            We continue our investigation of the use of interior point algorithms 
            to solve the linear programming relaxations in a cutting plane method. 
            Techniques used include attempting to identify cutting planes early 
            and storing an old feasible point (for recentering when adding cutting 
            planes). Computational results are presented for several different 
            classes of integer programming problems. 
             
           
            
              BAYESIAN APPROACH TO COMBINATORIAL OPTIMIZATION 
                 
                ps 
                file is available 
               
              Jonas MOCKUS 
              Institute of Mathematics and Informatics 
              Akademijos 4, Vilnius, Lithuani 
              and 
              Audris MOCKUS 
              AT\&T Bell Laboratories 
              Naperville, IL 60566  
              and 
              Linas MOCKUS (speaker) 
              School of Chemical Engineering, Purdue University 
              W.Lafayette, IN 47907-1283  
            
            We consider the average deviation as a criterion when designing numerical 
            techniques and algorithms. We call that a Bayesian approach. First 
            we describe in short the Bayesian approach to the continuous global 
            optimization. Then we show how to apply the results to the calibration 
            of parameters of randomized heuristic techniques of combinatorial 
            optimization.  
            The new idea of this research is to define an a priori distribution 
            on a set of heuristic decision rules. The usual way is to define it 
            on a set of functions to be minimized. The definition of the a priori 
            distribution on the set of heuristic decision rules helps to include 
            the expert knowledge and to speed up the search.  
            We show the advantages and disadvantages of the Bayesian heuristics 
            approach applying this approach in different problems of combinatorial 
            and discrete optimization such as knapsack, flow-shop, traveling salesman, 
            parameter grouping, and scheduling of batch operations.  
            We describe the software for UNIX and DOS platforms.  
            We consider the average deviation as a criterion when designing numerical 
            techniques and algorithms. We call that a Bayesian approach. First 
            we describe in short the Bayesian approach to the continuous global 
            optimization. Then we show how to apply the results to the calibration 
            of parameters of randomized heuristic techniques of combinatorial 
            optimization.  
            The new idea of this research is to define an a priori distribution 
            on a set of heuristic decision rules. The usual way is to define it 
            on a set of functions to be minimized. The definition of the a priori 
            distribution on the set of heuristic decision rules helps to include 
            the expert knowledge and to speed up the search.  
            We show the advantages and disadvantages of the Bayesian heuristics 
            approach applying this approach in different problems of combinatorial 
            optimization such as knapsack, flow-shop, traveling salesman, parameter 
            grouping, and scheduling of batch operations.  
            We describe the software for UNIX and DOS platforms.  
            A latex 
            file with the abstract and an outline, is available. The file 
            is 290 lines.  
             
           
            
              Primal-Dual Path Following Algorithms 
                for Semidefinite Programming 
               
              Renato Monteiro 
              School of ISyE, Georgia Institute of Technology 
              Atlanta, GA 30332, USA 
              monteiro@isye.gatech.edu 
            
             
            This talk deals with a class of primal-dual interior-point algorithms 
            for semidefinite programming (SDP) which was introduced by Kojima, 
            Shindoh and Hara. By characterizing their search direction as the 
            unique solution of a system of linear equations in symmetric variables, 
            we present: 1) a simplified polynomial convergence proof for their 
            short-step path following algorithm and, 2) for the first time, a 
            polynomially convergent long-step path following algorithm for SDP. 
            We also discuss how our approach can be used to extend many other 
            feasible and infeasible primal-dual LP methods to SDP. 
             
           
            
              Condition Measures and Properties of the 
                Central Trajectory of a Semidefinite Program 
               
              Manuel A. Nunez (speaker) and Robert M. Freund,  
              Operations Research Center 
              Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139  
            
             
            Renegar's condition number measures how well conditioned the data 
            is for a linear program with data d = (A,b,c). We extend this notion 
            to semidefinite programming and use it to prove characterizations 
            of the distance to ill-posedness of a given data instance, upper and 
            lower bounds on sizes of solutions, and rates of change of solutions 
            along the central trajectory of a semidefinite program. 
             
           
            
              Trust region Problems: Theoretic Results 
                and New Algorithmic Developments 
               
              Laura Palagi (speaker) and Stefano Lucidi (Universit`a di Roma "La 
              Sapienza")  
              ps file is available 
               
            
             
            We consider a trust region problem, namely the problem of minimizing 
            a (possibly nonconvex) quadratic function with a quadratic constraint. 
            We point out some new theoretic properties of the problem. In particular, 
            we show that (i) given a KKT point that is not a global minimizer, 
            it is easy to find a "better" feasible point; (ii) strict complementarity 
            holds at the local-nonglobal minimizer. Moreover, we show that the 
            original constrained problem is equivalent to the unconstrained minimization 
            of a piecewise quartic merit function. Using the unconstrained formulation 
            we give, in the nonconvex case, a new second order necessary condition 
            for global minimizers. On the basis of the unconstrained formulation, 
            we define a Truncated Newton scheme particularly suitable for defining 
            a new efficient algorithm for large scale trust region problems. We 
            report some numerical experiments obtained by a preliminary matlab 
            code. 
             
           
            
              Using linear programming to help solve 
                quadratic assignment problems 
               
              Mauricio G.C. Resende (speaker) 
              AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill 
              and Panos Pardalos, University of Florida, Gainsville.  
            
             
            In this talk, we consider the exact solution of the quadratic assignment 
            problem. We present a parallel branch and bound algorithm that uses 
            linear programming to produce very effective lower bounds. Two LP-based 
            lower bounds are considered, one of which has been shown to produce 
            100 percent tight lower bounds for all instances of QAPLIB, a standard 
            library of QAP test problems, having dimension less than or equal 
            to 12. Since the linear programs are large-scale and highly degenerate, 
            simplex method LP solvers, such as CPLEX and IBM OSL can solve only 
            the smallest of instances. Likewise, since the Cholesky factors of 
            the direction-determining matrices have high levels of fill-in, interior 
            point implementations that use direct factorizations, such as CPLEX 
            barrier, IBM OSL barrier, and OB-1, are ineffective. The LP-solver 
            used in our code uses a preconditioned conjugate gradient algorithm 
            to approximately compute the interior point directions and has solved 
            QAP LP-based lower bound linear programs with over 150,000 constraints 
            and 300,000 variables. We present computational results that show 
            the effectiveness of these lower bounds.  
            (Parts of this research have been done jointly with K.G. Ramakrishnan 
            (AT&T Bell Laboratories), P.M. Pardalos (U. of Florida), Z. Drezner 
            (California State U. at Fullerton), B. Ramachandran (Purdue U.) and 
            J.F. Pekny (Purdue U.).) 
             
           
            
              Cone-LP's and Semidefinite Programs: Geometry 
                and a Simplex-type Method 
               
              Gabor Pataki (University of Waterloo)  
            
             
            We consider optimization problems expressed as a linear program with 
            a cone constraint. Cone-LP's subsume ordinary linear programs, and 
            semidefinite programs. We study the notions of basic solutions, nondegeneracy, 
            and feasible directions, and propose a generalization of the simplex 
            method for a large class including LP's and SDP's. One key feature 
            of our approach is considering feasible directions as a sum of {\em 
            two} directions. In LP, these correspond to variables leaving and 
            entering the basis, respectively. The resulting algorithm for SDP 
            inherits several important properties of the LP-simplex method. In 
            particular, the linesearch can be done in the current face of the 
            cone, similarly to LP, where the linesearch must determine only the 
            variable leaving the basis. 
             
           
            
              D.c. (difference of convex functions) Optimization: 
                Theory, Algorithms & Aplications 
               
              PHAM DINH Tao (speaker) and LE THI Hoai An  
              Mathematical Modelling and Applied Optimization Group  
              LMI-INSA Rouen - CNRS URA 1378.  
              BP 08 76131 Mont Saint Aignan, France 
              lethi@insa-rouen.fr  
              pham@insa-rouen.fr  
            
             
            D.c. program is of the form \[\alpha = \inf\{f(x) - h(x): x \in \R^n\} 
            \hspace{1cm} (P) \] where $g,h$ are convex, lower semicontinuous and 
            proper on $\R^n$. The function $f$ is called d.c. function and $g,h$ 
            its d.c. components. We present the theory of d.c. programming: d.c. 
            duality, local \& global optimality conditions and stability of 
            Lagrangian duality. D.c. programming marks the passage from convex 
            optimization to nonconvex optimization. This extension is large enough 
            to cover most real-life problems but not too much for still being 
            allowed to use the convex analysis tools. We give the description 
            of DCA (D.c. Algorithm) (based on the d.c. duality and the local optimality 
            conditions) and its general convergence, in particular the finite 
            convergence of DCA in d.c. polyhedral programming (i.e. when $g$ or 
            $h$ is polyhedral convex). D.c. objective function has infinitely 
            many d.c. decompositions which may have an important influence on 
            the qualities (robustness, stability, rate of convergence and globality 
            of sought solutions) of DCA. In pratice rgularization techniques using 
            the kernel $(\lambda)/2\|.\|^2$ and inf-convolution may provide interesting 
            d.c. decompositions of objective functions for DCA. In general DCA 
            converges to a local solution however we observe that it converges 
            quite often to a global one. So it is particularly interesting to 
            combine DCA and Branch-and-Bound method for globally solving large-scale 
            nonconvex programs. Finally some given applications of DCA to solving 
            Trust Region subproblems, Multidimensional Scaling problem, Nonconvex 
            quadratic programming problem, Mixed 0-1 quadratic programming in 
            image restoration processing, Optimization over the Efficient Set 
            problem, ...) have proved its efficiency, especially in the large-scale 
            setting. 
             
           
            
              Bounds on Feasible Solutions of Semidefinite 
                Programs 
               
              Lorant Porkolab (speaker) and Leonid Khachiyan (RUTCOR)  
            
             
            We give upper and lower bounds on solution norms and the sensitivity 
            of semidefinite programs. We also discuss their complexity implications, 
            including the polynomial-time solvability of semidefinite programs 
            with a fixed number of variables or constraints. 
             
           
            
              Recognition of Polyhedral Semidefinite 
                Programs 
               
              M. Ramana (University of Florida, Gainsville) 
            
             
            A spectrahedron is defined to be a set of the type $\{x|Q(x)\succeq 
            0\}$, where $Q(x)$ is an affine matrix map. Semidefinite Programming 
            involves optimizing linear functions over spectrahedra. It is easy 
            to show that every polyhedron is a spectrahedron. The question investigated 
            here is characterization and recognition of matrix maps $Q(x)$ for 
            which the associated spectrahedron is a polyhedron. After developing 
            a decomposition based characterization, it is shown that the general 
            recognition problem is NP-Hard. However, under an irredundancy assumption 
            on the map $Q(x)$, the problem can be solved in randomized polynomial 
            time. The problem has some connections with the question of when a 
            given graph is perfect. 
             
           
            
              Large Scale SDP using eigenvalues 
               
              Franz Rendl (speaker) and Christoph Helmberg (University of Graz) 
            
             
            We discuss the problems arising, when solving SDP using interior point 
            based techniques. An alternative is to use the formulation of the 
            dual as an eigenvalue optimization problem. The advantage of this 
            approach lies in the fact, that extreme eigenvalues of symmetric matrices 
            can be computed without having the matrix explicitely available. Moreover, 
            the dual does not increase in size, if additional primal constraints 
            are added. The disadvantages are also obvious. First, eigenvalue optimization 
            is a nonsmooth problem. Secondly, it is nontrivial to generate a good 
            primal solution, if the dual problem is not solved exactly. We show 
            how to handle both issues: the solution of a special linear program 
            will provide a descent direction, even if the largest eigenvalue is 
            not simple. The dual of this LP provides a primal solution for the 
            SDP. We present some preliminary computational experiments of this 
            approach, applied to the semidefinite relaxation of the max-cut problem 
             
           
            
              Initialization in semidefinite programming 
                via a self-dual embbedding 
               
              Kees Roos (speaker), Tamas Terlaky, Etienne de Klerk  
              Faculty of Technical Mathematics and Informatics 
              Delft University of Technology 
              P.O. Box 5031, 2600 GA Delft, The Netherlands 
              e--mail 
              E.deKlerk@twi.tudelft.nl 
              C.Roos@twi.tudelft.nl 
              T.Terlaky@twi.tudelft.nl 
            
             
            Motivated by the success of interior point methods for large--scale 
            linear programming the field of interior point algorithms for semidefinite 
            programming has become an active research area. Many interior point 
            methods for linear programming have now been extended to the more 
            general semidefinite case, but the initialization problem is still 
            not well solved for the semidefinite case. We show that the initialization 
            strategy for linear programming which embeds a given problem and its 
            dual in a self--dual skew--symmetric problem can be extended in a 
            natural way to the semidefinite case. In this way the initialization 
            problem for semidefinite problems can be solved nicely. The method 
            also provides a solution for the initialization of quadratic programs 
            and it is applicable as well to more general convex problems with 
            conic formulation. 
             
           
            
              SECOND ORDER OPTIMALITY CONDITIONS AND 
                STABILITY ANALYSIS OF SEMI-DEFINITE PROGRAMS 
               
              Alexander Shapiro (Georgia Tech Univ.) 
               
            
            In this talk we discuss second order optimality conditions in semi-definite 
            programming. In particular we show that the cone of positive semi-definite 
            matrix has a certain property which allows to close the gap between 
            second order necessary and second order sufficient conditions. We 
            also discuss applications of these results to stability analysis of 
            semi-definite programs.  
             
           
            
              Interior Point Trajectories in Semidefinite 
                Programming 
               
              D. Goldfarb and K. Scheinberg (speaker) 
              Columbia University, Dept. of IEOR, New York, NY  
            
             
            We study interior point trajectories in semidefinite programming (SDP) 
            including the central path of an SDP. This work was inspired by the 
            seminal work by Megiddo on linear programming trajectories (\cite{M}). 
            Under an assumption of primal and dual strict feasibility, we show 
            that the primal and dual central paths exist and converge to the analytic 
            centers of the optimal faces of, respectively, the primal and the 
            dual problems. We define a class of trajectories that are similar 
            to the central path, but can be constructed to pass through any given 
            interior feasible point and study their convergence. Finally, we relate 
            these trajectories and the central path to interior point methods 
            by showing that at any given point along any one of these trajectories, 
            the direction of the tangent corresponds to a direction of an interior 
            point method. We also consider the limiting behavior of the derivatives 
            associated with these trajectories. 
             
           
            
              Duality and self-duality for semidefinite 
                and conic convex programming  
                ps file is available 
                
               
              Zhi-Quan Luo (McMaster Univ.) 
              Jos F. Sturm (speaker) and Shuzhong Zhang, Erasmus University Rotterdam 
               
            
             
            It is known that in semidefinite and conic convex programming, we 
            have to distinguish between strong versus weak infeasibility, and 
            strong duality versus the existence of a complementary pair, whereas 
            such distinctions do not exist for linear programming. We show that 
            a generalization of the self-dual feasibility model of Goldman and 
            Tucker can only give (1) a complementary solution, (2) a certificate 
            of strong infeasibility or (3) show that the problem is neither strongly 
            infeasible nor endowed with a complementary pair. However, we propose 
            an extended self-dual program with a trivial complementary solution 
            and the following properties: Any weakly centered sequence converging 
            to a complementary pair either induces a sequence converging to a 
            certificate of strong infeasibility, or it induces a sequence of primal-dual 
            pairs for which the amount of constraint violation converges to zero, 
            and the corresponding objective values are in the limit not worse 
            than the optimal objective value(s). We also generalize the stopping 
            rules of Todd and Ye, so that precise conclusions can be drawn based 
            on an approximate solution to the extended self-dual program.  
            KEY WORDS: conic convex programming, semidefinite programming, duality, 
            self-duality. 
             
           
            
              Potential reduction algorithms for structured 
                combinatorial optimization problems 
               
              J.P. Warners, T. Terlaky(speaker), C. Roos, B. Jansen 
               
              Department of Statistics, Probability and Operations Research 
              Faculty of Technical Mathematics and Informatics 
              Delft University of Technology 
              P.O. Box 5031, 2600 GA Delft, The Netherlands. 
              Tel.: (015)2782547, FAX: (015)2787255 
              e-mail: t.terlaky@twi.tudelft.nl  
            
             
            Recently Karmarkar proposed a potential reduction algorithm for binary 
            feasibility problems. In this paper we point out a practical drawback 
            of his potential function and we propose a modified potential function 
            that is computationally more attractive. As the main result of the 
            paper, we will consider a special class of binary feasibility problems, 
            and show how problems of this class can be reformulated as nonconvex 
            quadratic optimization problems. The reformulation is very compact 
            and a further interesting property is, that (instead of just one) 
            multiple solutions may be found by optimizing it. We introduce a potential 
            function to optimize the new model. Finally, we report on computational 
            results on several instances of the graph coloring and frequency assignment 
            problem, comparing the three potential functions. 
             
           
            
              
               
              Michael J. Todd (speaker), School of OR, Cornell University 
              Kim Chuan Toh, Center for Applied Mathematics, Cornell University 
              Reha H. Tutuncu, School of OR, Cornell University  
            
             
            Nesterov and Todd discuss several path-following and potential-reduction 
            interior-point methods for certain convex programming problems. In 
            the special case of semidefinite programming, we discuss how to compute 
            the corresponding directions efficiently and how to view them as Newton 
            directions. 
             
           
            
              Determinant Maximization with linear matrix 
                inequality constraints  
                gzipped ps file 
                is available 
               
              Lieven Vandenberghe (speaker), Stephen Boyd, Shao-Po Wu  
              Information Systems Laboratory, Durand 109 
              Department of Electrical Engineering 
              Stanford University 
              Stanford, CA 94305  
            
             
            The problem of maximizing the determinant of a matrix subject to linear 
            matrix inequalities arises in many fields, including computational 
            geometry, statistics, system identification, experiment design, and 
            information and communication theory. It can also be considered as 
            a generalization of the semidefinite programming problem. We give 
            an overview of the applications of the determinant maximization problem, 
            pointing out simple cases where specialized algorithms or analytical 
            solutions are known. We then describe an interior-point method, with 
            a simplified analysis of the worst-case complexity and numerical results 
            that indicate that the method is very efficient, both in theory and 
            in practice. Compared to existing specialized algorithms (where they 
            are available), the interior-point method will generally be slower; 
            the advantage is that it handles a much wider variety of problems. 
             
           
            
              On the complexity of approximating a KKT point 
                of quadratic programming 
               
              Yinyu Ye, Iowa State University 
            
             
            We present a potential reduction algorithm to approximate a Karush-Kuhn-Tucker 
            (KKT) point of general quadratic programming. We show that the algorithm 
            is a fully polynomial-time approximation scheme, and its running-time 
            dependency on accuracy $\epsilon\in (0,1)$ is $O((1/\epsilon)\log(1/\epsilon)\log(\log(1/\epsilon)))$, 
            compared to the previously best-known result $O((1/\epsilon)^2)$. 
            Furthermore, the limit of the KKT point satisfies the second-order 
            necessary optimality condition of being a local minimizer. 
             
           
            
              Symmetric primal-dual path following algorithms 
                for SDP  
                ps file is 
                available 
               
              Jos F. Sturm and Shuzhong Zhang (speaker) (Erasmus University Rotterdam) 
               
            
             
            We present a symmetric primal-dual transformation for SDP. In this 
            approach, standard techniques for analyzing primal-dual path following 
            algorithms for linear programming can be easily adapted to the case 
            of SDP. More properties of the SDP problems under this interpretation 
            will be discussed. 
             
           
            
              Some Thoughts on Primal-Dual Interior-Point 
                Methods for Semidefinite Programming 
               
              Yin Zhang (University of Maryland Baltimore County)  
               
            
             
            We plan to discuss issues in formulation, complexity analysis and 
            computation of primal-dual interior-point methods for semidefinite 
            programming. We will focus on a class of primal-dual methods that 
            can be viewed as perturbed and damped, interior-point Newton or composite 
            Newton method applied to some form of optimality system. We will discuss 
            some critical computational issues and present preliminary numerical 
            results. 
             
           
            
              Semidefinite Programming Relaxations for 
                the Quadratic Assignment Problem 
               
              Qing Zhao (speaker) 
              University of Waterloo, Department of 
              Combinatorics and Optimization, Faculty of Mathematics, 
              Waterloo, Ontario, N2L 3G1 Canada 
              Stefan E. Karisch 
              Technische Universit\"at Graz, Institut f\"ur Mathematik, 
              Kopernikusgasse 24, A-8010 Graz, Austria 
              Franz Rend 
              Technische Universit\"at Graz, Institut f\"ur Mathematik, 
              Kopernikusgasse 24, A-8010 Graz, Austria 
              Henry Wolkowicz 
              University of Waterloo, Department of 
              Combinatorics and Optimization, Faculty of Mathematics, 
              Waterloo, Ontario, N2L 3G1 Canada 
            
             
            Semidefinite programming relaxations for the quadratic assignment 
            problem QAP are derived using the dual of the Lagrangian dual of appropriate 
            equivalent representations of QAP. These relaxations result in the 
            interesting, special, case where only the dual problem of the relaxations 
            have strict interior, i.e. the Slater's constraint qualification does 
            not hold for the primal problem. Although there is no duality gap 
            in theory, this indicates that the relaxations cannot be solved in 
            a numerically stable way. By exploring the geometrical structure, 
            we are able to find projectey semidefinite programming relaxations, 
            which can be further tightened by using cutting planes on the minimal 
            face. The new resulting relaxations, and their duals, satisfy the 
            Slater's constraint qualification, and so can be solved numerically. 
            Numerical results are presented which indicate that the described 
            methods are very promising.  
         
        
 
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