The Salesman's Improved Paths: A 3/2+1/34 Approximation

Abstract

We give a new, strongly polynomial algorithm and improved analysis of the metric s-t path TSP. It finds a tour of cost less than 1.53 times the optimum of the subtour elimination LP, while known examples show that 1.5 is a lower bound for the integrality gap. A key new idea is the deletion of some edges of Christofides' trees, and we show that the arising "reconnection" problems can be solved for a minor extra cost. On the one hand our algorithm and analysis extend previous tools, at the same time simplifying the framework. On the other hand new tools are introduced, such as a flow problem used for analyzing the reconnection cost, and the use of a set of more and more restrictive minimum cost spanning trees, each of which can still be found by the greedy algorithm. The latter leads to a simple Christofides-like algorithm completely avoiding the computation of a convex combination of spanning trees. Furthermore, the 3/2 target-bound is easily reached in some relevant new cases.