Volume 23, Number 3, 503-525, DOI: 10.1007/s00493-003-0030-3

Fast Cycle Canceling Algorithms for Minimum Cost Submodular Flow*

Satoru Iwata†, S.Thomas Mccormick‡ and Maiko Shigeno§

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Abstract

This paper presents two fast cycle canceling algorithms for the submodular flligow problem. The filigrst uses an assignment problem whose optimal solution identifiliges most negative node-disjoint cycles in an auxiliary network. Canceling these cycles lexicographically makes it possible to obtain an optimal submodular flligow in O(n 4 h log(nC)) time, which almost matches the current fastest weakly polynomial time for submodular flow (where n is the number of nodes, h is the time for computing an exchange capacity, and C is the maximum absolute value of arc costs). The second algorithm generalizes Goldbergrsquos cycle canceling algorithm for min cost flow to submodular flow to also get a running time of O(n 4 h log(nC)).. We show how to modify these algorithms to make them strongly polynomial, with running times of O(n 6 h log n), which matches the fastest strongly polynomial time bound for submodular flow. We also show how to extend both algorithms to solve submodular flow with separable convex objectives.

AMS Subject Classification (2000):   90C27 - 90C35 - 90B10 - 90C25

* An extended abstract of a preliminary version of part of this paper appeared in [22].
dagger Research supported in part by a Grant-in-Aid of the Ministry of Education, Science, Sports and Culture of Japan.
Dagger Research supported by an NSERC Operating Grant. Part of this research was done during a sabbatical leave at Cornell SORIE.
§ Research supported in part by a Grant-in-Aid of the Ministry of Education, Science, Sports and Culture of Japan.

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