From Trees to Polynomials and Back Again: New Capacity Bounds with Applications to TSP

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Gurvits, Leonid, Klein, Nathan, Leake, Jonathan
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2023
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author Gurvits, Leonid
Klein, Nathan
Leake, Jonathan
author_facet Gurvits, Leonid
Klein, Nathan
Leake, Jonathan
contents We give simply exponential lower bounds on the probabilities of a given strongly Rayleigh distribution, depending only on its expectation. This resolves a weak version of a problem left open by Karlin-Klein-Oveis Gharan in their recent breakthrough work on metric TSP, and this resolution leads to a minor improvement of their approximation factor for metric TSP. Our results also allow for a more streamlined analysis of the algorithm. To achieve these new bounds, we build upon the work of Gurvits-Leake on the use of the productization technique for bounding the capacity of a real stable polynomial. This technique allows one to reduce certain inequalities for real stable polynomials to products of affine linear forms, which have an underlying matrix structure. In this paper, we push this technique further by characterizing the worst-case polynomials via bipartitioned forests. This rigid combinatorial structure yields a clean induction argument, which implies our stronger bounds. In general, we believe the results of this paper will lead to further improvement and simplification of the analysis of various combinatorial and probabilistic bounds and algorithms.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2311_09072
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle From Trees to Polynomials and Back Again: New Capacity Bounds with Applications to TSP
Gurvits, Leonid
Klein, Nathan
Leake, Jonathan
Combinatorics
Discrete Mathematics
Probability
We give simply exponential lower bounds on the probabilities of a given strongly Rayleigh distribution, depending only on its expectation. This resolves a weak version of a problem left open by Karlin-Klein-Oveis Gharan in their recent breakthrough work on metric TSP, and this resolution leads to a minor improvement of their approximation factor for metric TSP. Our results also allow for a more streamlined analysis of the algorithm. To achieve these new bounds, we build upon the work of Gurvits-Leake on the use of the productization technique for bounding the capacity of a real stable polynomial. This technique allows one to reduce certain inequalities for real stable polynomials to products of affine linear forms, which have an underlying matrix structure. In this paper, we push this technique further by characterizing the worst-case polynomials via bipartitioned forests. This rigid combinatorial structure yields a clean induction argument, which implies our stronger bounds. In general, we believe the results of this paper will lead to further improvement and simplification of the analysis of various combinatorial and probabilistic bounds and algorithms.
title From Trees to Polynomials and Back Again: New Capacity Bounds with Applications to TSP
topic Combinatorics
Discrete Mathematics
Probability
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.09072