Odd Paths, Cycles, and T-Joins
Ildikó Schlotter – András Sebő
SIAM Journal on Discrete Mathematics Volume 39 • Issue 1
March 2025 • Pages: 484 – 504 Published online: 20 February 2025
March 2025 • Pages: 484 – 504 Published online: 20 February 2025
Abstract
Minimizing the weight of an edge set satisfying parity constraints is a challenging branch of combinatorial optimization as witnessed by the binary hypergraph chapter of Alexander Schrijver’s book [Combinatorial Optimization, Springer-Verlag, 2003, Chapter 80]. This area contains relevant graph theory problems including open cases of the Max Cut problem and some multiflow problems. We clarify the interconnections between some of these problems and establish three levels of difficulty. On the one hand, we prove that the Shortest Odd Path problem in undirected graphs without cycles of negative total weight and several related problems are NP-hard, settling a long-standing open question asked by Lovász (Open Problem 27 in Schrijver’s book [Combinatorial Optimization, Springer-Verlag, 2003]). On the other hand, we provide an algorithm for the closely related and well-studied Minimum-weight Odd
Keywords: shortest odd path, shortest odd cycle, minimum-weight odd T-join, conservative graph, parity constraint, computational complexity
MSC codes:68Q17, 05C85, 05C12, 68R10, 68Q25