This dissertation investigates the Quadratic Unconstrained Binary Optimization (QUBO) problem, i.e. the problem of minimizing a quadratic function in binary variables. QUBO is studied at two complementary levels. First, there is an algorithmic aspect that tells how to preprocess the problem, how to find heuristics, how to get improved bounds and how to solve the problem with all the above ingredients.Second, there is a practical aspect that uses QUBO to solve various applications from the engineering and social sciences fields including: via minimization, 2D/3D Ising models, 1D Ising chain models, image binarization, hierarchical clustering, greedy graph coloring/partitioning, MAX-2-SAT, MIN-VC, MAX-CLIQUE, MAX-CUT, graph stability and minimum k-partition.Several families of fast heuristics for QUBO are analyzed, which include a novel probabilistic based class of methods.It is shown that there is a unique maximal set of persistencies for the linearization model for QUBO.This set is determined in polynomial time by a maximum flow followed by the computation of the strong components of a network that has 2n+2 nodes, where n is the number of variables. The identification of the above persistencies leads to a unique decomposition of the function, such that each component can be optimized separately. To find further persistencies, two additional techniques are proposed: one is based on the second order derivatives of Hammer et al. [HH81]; the other technique is a probing procedure on the two possible values of the variables.These preprocessing tools work remarkably well for certain classes of problems.We improved the Iterated Roof-Dual bound (IRD) of [BH89] by proposing two combinatorial methods: one was named the squeezed IRD; and the second was called the project-and-lift IRD method.The cubic-dual bound can be found by means of linear programming by adding a set of triangle inequalities to the standard linearization, whose number is cubic in the number of variables. We show that this set can be reduced depending on the coefficients of the terms of the function. This leads to the possibility of computing the cubic-duals of larger QUBOs.
We propose several efficient preprocessing techniques for Unconstrained Quadratic Binary Optimization (QUBO), including the direct use of enhanced versions of known basic techniques (e.g., implications derived from first and second order derivatives and from roof–duality), and the integrated use (e.g., by probing and by consensus) of the basic techniques. The application of these techniques is implemented using a natural network flow model of QUBO. The use of the proposed preprocessing techniques provides: (i) a lower bound of the minimum of the objective function, (ii) the values of some of the variables in some or every optimum, (iii) binary relations (equations, inequalities, or non-equalities) between the values of certain pairs of variables in some or every optimum, and (iv) the decomposition (if possible) of the original problem into several smaller pairwise independent QUBO problems. Extensive computational experience showing the efficiency of the proposed techniques is presented. Substantial problem simplifications, improving considerably the existing techniques, are demonstrated on benchmark problems as well as on randomly generated ones. In particular, it is shown that 100% data reduction is achieved using the proposed preprocessing techniques for MAX-CUT graphs derived from VLSI design, MAX-Clique in c-fat graphs derived from fault diagnosis, and minimum vertex cover problems in random planar graphs of up to 500 000 vertices. Acknowledgements: The third author was partially financially supported by the Portuguese FCT and by the FSE in the context of the III Quadro Comunitario de Apoio.
Let
(QP) be an integer quadratic program that consists in minimizing a quadratic function subject to linear constraints. A such problem belongs to the class of
NP-Hard problems. Standard solvers that use a Branch and Bound algorithm can efficiently solve
(QP) in the specific case where its objective function is convex. Thus, to solve
(QP), we choose to reformulate it into an equivalent problem with a convex objective function. Two reformulations are possible: either we reformulate
(QP) into a linear program, or we reformulate it into a convex quadratic program. \par In the first part of this dissertation, we present several linearizations of
(QP), i.e. reformulations into an equivalent program with a linear objective function. Many linearization methods for the quadratic binary programs are known. A natural approach when considering
(QP) is therefore to reformulate it into a quadratic binary program. This can be done by the binary decomposition of each integer variable and then the linearization of each new product of two binary variables. However, this method, that we denote by \texttt{BBL (Binary Binary Linearization)}, leads to a linear program with a large number of variables and constraints. We then present a new approach, \texttt{BIL (Binary Integer Linearization)}, that consists in reformulating
(QP) into a particular quadratic integer program where each quadratic term is the product of an integer variable by a binary variable. As in the \texttt{BBL} approach, the binary variables come from the binary decomposition of the initial integer variables. Then, we linearize the obtained program by replacing each quadratic term by a new real variable and a set of inequalities. As the number of quadratic terms is lower than in the \texttt{BBL} approach, the number of additional variables is reduced. Hence, the obtained integer linear program is significantly smaller in the \texttt{BIL} approach. Moreover, contrary to what one might think, the \texttt{BIL} approach provides a better bound obtained by continuous relaxation than the \texttt{BBL} approach. Each reformulation leads to an integer linear program that is equivalent to
(QP) and that we improve by adding valid inequalities. \par In a second part, we present several quadratic convex reformulations of
(QP), i.e. we reformulate
(QP) into an equivalent program, with a quadratic convex objective function. We first introduce a simple approach to convexify
(QP) that consists in expressing linearly the squares of integer variables using their unary decompositions, and then to convexify with the smallest eigenvalue of the Hessian matrix of
(QP). We call this approach \texttt{NC (Naive Convexification)}. Then, we introduce a new convex reformulation scheme that perturbs the objective function of
(QP) with the linear expression of the products of integer variables, and the equality constraints of
(QP). Then, we show that we can compute, within this scheme, an optimal reformulation of
(QP) in terms of bound obtained by continuous relaxation : the \texttt{IQCR (Integer Quadratic Convex Reformulation)} approach. This reformulation is based on the optimal dual solution of a semi-definite relaxation of
(QP). Moreover, we show that the method \texttt{IQCR} is easily adaptable to mixed-integer programming. This adaptation, that we call \texttt{IQCRs}, also allows us to integrate the inequality constraints of
(QP) into the perturbation of the objective function of our convex reformulation scheme. Then, we present an interesting restriction of the method \texttt{IQCR}, called \texttt{CQCR (Compact Quadratic Convex Reformulation)}. The difference between this last approach and \texttt{IQCR} is that \texttt{CQCR} only uses the linear expression of the integer variable squares to perturb the objective function, while \texttt{IQCR} uses all the products. The interest is that \texttt{CQCR} produces a reformulated problem with a reduced size in comparison with the \texttt{IQCR} approach, what could be profitable experimentally. Finally, we apply these
3 methods \texttt{NC}, \texttt{CQCR} and \texttt{IQCR} to binary quadratic programming. We show that \texttt{NC} and \texttt{CQCR} are equivalent to existing binary convex reformulations. An interesting result is that \texttt{IQCR} is an improvement of existing convexifications for binary quadratic programming.\par In a third part, we design a specific Branch and Bound algorithm based on a projection property of the \texttt{IQCR} approach.\par Finally, we compare the four obtained linearizations and the three obtained quadratic convex reformulations from the computational point of view. For integer programming, computational experiences are carried out with two classes of instances of
(QP), the first having one equality constraint, and the other having one inequality constraint. The results show that most of the considered instances with up to
40 variables can be solved in one hour of CPU time by the \texttt{IQCR} and \texttt{CQCR} approaches. We then test \texttt{IQCR} on binary quadratic programming. The results corroborate that our approach \texttt{IQCR} improves existing convexifications.
The Quadratic Unconstrained Binary Optimization problem (QUBO) is the optimization of a quadratic function where the variables are binary; it is frequently used to model combinatorial problems in operational research and graph theory.QUBO is an NP-Complete problem and a challenge to exact methods.Therefore, the problem has been approached with heuristics.Here, we propose new ideas to solve QUBO with exact methods.We develop a new quadratic formulation that maps the binary problem into an equivalent continuous optimization problem with a single quadratic constraint.A further development delves into Lagrangian inspired concepts to obtain an equivalent unconstrained formulation.The case studies illustrate the benefit and limitations of both formulations.Also, the computational experiments show that problems with up to 2500 variables were solved with processing times under 500 seconds to achieve an average gap under 1%; these results also show that the approach allowed to solve, with an exact method, instances of 1500 more binary variables than the instances considered in previous papers.
With the advances in customized hardware for quantum annealing and digital/CMOS Annealing, Quadratic Unconstrained Binary Optimization (QUBO) models have received growing attention in the optimization literature. Motivated by an existing general-purpose approach that derives QUBO models from binary linear programs (BLP), we propose a novel Multilevel Constraint Transformation Scheme (MLCTS) that derives QUBO models with fewer ancillary binary variables. We formulate sufficient conditions for the existence of a compact QUBO formulation (i.e., in the original BLP decision space) in terms of constraint levelness and demonstrate the flexibility and applicability of MLCTS on synthetic examples and several well-known combinatorial optimization problems, i.e., the Maximum 2-Satisfiability Problem, the Linear Ordering Problem, the Community Detection Problem, and the Maximum Independence Set Problem. For a proof-of-concept, we compare the performance of two QUBO models for the latter problem on both a general-purpose software-based solver and a hardware-based QUBO solver. The MLCTS-derived models demonstrate significantly better performance for both solvers, in particular, solving up to seven times more instances with the hardware-based approach.
Practical discrete optimization problems often contain multidimensional arrays of variables interrelated by linear constraints such as equalities and inequalities. Values of each variable depend on its specific meaning and can be binary, integer, or discrete. These conditions make it technically difficult to reduce the original problem statement to QUBO form. We identify and examine three necessary transformations of the original problem statement to reduce it to QUBO form, namely transition from a multidimensional to a one-dimensional array, transition to binary variables in mixed problems, and incorporating linear constraints into the objective function in the form of quadratic penalties. We present and prove computationally convenient formulas to simplify these transformations. In particular, the formulas for the transition from a multidimensional to a one-dimensional array of variables are based on the application of the Kronecker product of matrices. The transformations considered are illustrated by numerous examples and used, as an application, to reduce a number of well-known problems in graph theory and combinatorial optimization to QUBO form.