Contribution of copositive formulations to the graph partitioning problem

Abstract

This article provides analysis of several copositive formulations of the graph partitioning problem and semidefinite relaxations based on them. We prove that the copositive formulations based on results from Burer [S. Burer, On the copositive representation of binary and continuous nonconvex quadratic programs. Math. Program. 120 (Ser. A) (2009), pp. 479–495] and the author of the paper [J. Povh, Semidefinite approximations for quadratic programs over orthogonal matrices. J. Global Optim. 48 (2010), pp. 447–463] are equivalent and that they both imply semidefinite relaxations which are stronger than the Donath–Hoffman eigenvalue lower bound [W.E. Donath and A.J. Hoffman, Lower bounds for the partitioning of graphs. IBM J. Res. Develop. 17 (1973), pp. 420–425] and the projected semidefinite lower bound from Wolkowicz and Zhao [H. Wolkowicz and Q. Zhao, Semidefinite programming relaxations for the graph partitioning problem. Discrete Appl. Math. 96–97 (1999), pp. 461–479].

Keywords:

• graph partitioning problem
• copositive programming
• semidefinite relaxation

AMS Subject Classifications:

• Primary: 90C22, 90C27
• Secondary: 65K05, 90C10

Acknowledgments

This project was partially supported by the Slovenian research agency under contracts 1000-08-210518.