The frequency $K_i$s for symmetrical traveling salesman problem
This work addresses the NP-hard TSP, a fundamental combinatorial optimization problem, with incremental improvements in characterizing edge frequencies for algorithm design.
The paper tackles the symmetric traveling salesman problem (TSP) by studying frequency properties of edges in optimal Hamiltonian cycles, leading to an algorithm that finds the optimal cycle in O(n^2 i_d^4 2^{i_d}) time, with experiments verifying the findings on various TSP instances.
The frequency $K_i$s ($i\in[4,n]$) are studied for symmetric traveling salesman problem ($TSP$) to characterize the structure properties of the edges in optimal Hamiltonian cycle ($OHC$). For a given $K_i$ in the complete graph $K_n$, the frequency $K_i$ is computed with the set of ${{i}\choose{2}}$ optimal $i$-vertex paths with fixed endpoints (optimal $i$-vertex paths) in the $K_i$. Given an $OHC$ edge related to $K_i$, it has certain frequency bigger than $\frac{1}{2}{{i}\choose{2}}$ in the frequency $K_i$, and that of an ordinary edge not in $OHC$ is smaller than $2(n-3)$. Moreover, given a frequency $K_i$ containing an $OHC$ edge related to $K_n$, the frequency of the $OHC$ edge is bigger than $\frac{1}{2}{{i}\choose{2}}$ in the average case. It also found that the probability that an $OHC$ edge is contained in the optimal $i$-vertex paths increases according to $i\in [4, n]$ or keeps stable if it decreases from $i$ to $i+1\leq n$. As the frequency $K_i$s are used to compute the frequency of an edge, each $OHC$ edge reaches its own peak frequency at $i=P_0$ where $P_0=\frac{n}{2} + 2$ for even $n$ or $\frac{n+1}{2} + 1$ for odd $n$. For each ordinary edge out of $OHC$, the probability that they are contained in the optimal $i$-vertex paths decreases according to $i$, respectively, in the average case. Moreover, the probability of an ordinary edge definitely decreases if $i \geq i_d$ where $i_d = O(n^{\frac{4}{7}})$ is the smallest number meeting the inequality $\frac{(n-2)(n-3) - (i_d-2)(i_d-3)}{(n-2)(n-3) - (i_d-1)(i_d-2)} \geq \sqrt{1 + \frac{2}{i_d(i_d+1)}}$. Based on these findings, an algorithm is presented to find $OHC$ in $O(n^2i_d^42^{i_d})$ time using dynamic programming. The experiments are executed to verify these findings with various $TSP$ instances.