LIPIcs.APPROX-RANDOM.2020.61.pdf
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Given a connected undirected graph G ̅ on n vertices, and non-negative edge costs c, the 2ECM problem is that of finding a 2-edge connected spanning multisubgraph of G ̅ of minimum cost. The natural linear program (LP) for 2ECM, which coincides with the subtour LP for the Traveling Salesman Problem on the metric closure of G ̅, gives a lower bound on the optimal cost. For instances where this LP is optimized by a half-integral solution x, Carr and Ravi (1998) showed that the integrality gap is at most 4/3: they show that the vector 4/3 x dominates a convex combination of incidence vectors of 2-edge connected spanning multisubgraphs of G ̅. We present a simpler proof of the result due to Carr and Ravi by applying an extension of Lovász’s splitting-off theorem. Our proof naturally leads to a 4/3-approximation algorithm for half-integral instances. Given a half-integral solution x to the LP for 2ECM, we give an O(n²)-time algorithm to obtain a 2-edge connected spanning multisubgraph of G ̅ whose cost is at most 4/3 c^T x.
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