We present a randomized approximation algorithm for computing traveling salesperson tours in undirected regular graphs. Given an n-vertex, k-regular graph, the algorithm computes a tour of length at most (1+frac 4+ln 4+varepsilon ln k-O(1)n, with high probability, in O(nk log k) time. This improves upon the result by Vishnoi ([Vishnoi12],FOCS 2012) for the same problem, in terms of both approximation factor, and running time. Furthermore, our result is incomparable with the recent result by Feige, Ravi, and Singh ([FeigeRS14], IPCO 2014), since our algorithm runs in linear time, for any fixed k. The key ingredient of our algorithm is a technique that uses edge-coloring algorithms to sample a cycle cover with O(n/log k) cycles, with high probability, in near linear time. Additionally, we also give a deterministic frac{3}{2}+O(frac{1}sqrt{k}) factor approximation algorithm for the TSP on n-vertex, k-regular graphs running in time O(nk).
@InProceedings{chiplunkar_et_al:LIPIcs.FSTTCS.2015.125, author = {Chiplunkar, Ashish and Vishwanathan, Sundar}, title = {{Approximating the Regular Graphic TSP in Near Linear Time}}, booktitle = {35th IARCS Annual Conference on Foundations of Software Technology and Theoretical Computer Science (FSTTCS 2015)}, pages = {125--135}, series = {Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)}, ISBN = {978-3-939897-97-2}, ISSN = {1868-8969}, year = {2015}, volume = {45}, editor = {Harsha, Prahladh and Ramalingam, G.}, publisher = {Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik}, address = {Dagstuhl, Germany}, URL = {https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.FSTTCS.2015.125}, URN = {urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-56264}, doi = {10.4230/LIPIcs.FSTTCS.2015.125}, annote = {Keywords: traveling salesperson problem, approximation, linear time} }
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