Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license
In this paper, we introduce a family of valid inequalities for the strongest currently known integer programming formulation of treewidth based on perfect elimination orderings. These inequalities arise from the structure of induced chordless cycles (holes) and strengthen the canonical linear relaxation by enforcing constraints that every feasible chordal completion must satisfy. To handle the exponentially many such inequalities, we develop a dedicated separation routine capable of detecting violated k-hole constraints within a cutting-plane framework. Our computational results show that incorporating these inequalities substantially improves the quality of the lower bounds across a broad range of graph classes, in some cases nearly closing the integrality gap.
@InProceedings{dascenzo:LIPIcs.SEA.2026.14,
author = {D'Ascenzo, Andrea},
title = {{K-Hole Separation in PEO‑Based ILP Treewidth Formulation}},
booktitle = {24th International Symposium on Experimental Algorithms (SEA 2026)},
pages = {14:1--14:14},
series = {Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
ISBN = {978-3-95977-422-2},
ISSN = {1868-8969},
year = {2026},
volume = {371},
editor = {Aum\"{u}ller, Martin and Finocchi, Irene},
publisher = {Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
address = {Dagstuhl, Germany},
URL = {https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.SEA.2026.14},
URN = {urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-260186},
doi = {10.4230/LIPIcs.SEA.2026.14},
annote = {Keywords: Treewidth, Integer Linear Programming, Polyhedral Combinatorics, Chordal Completion, Induced Cycles}
}