Negative-Weight Shortest Paths and Unit Capacity Minimum Cost Flow in $\tilde{O}(m^{10/7} \log W)$ Time

Abstract

In this paper, we study a set of combinatorial optimization problems on weighted graphs: the shortest path problem with negative weights, the weighted perfect bipartite matching problem, the unit-capacity minimum-cost maximum flow problem and the weighted perfect bipartite b-matching problem under the assumption that b 1 = O(m). We show that each one of these four problems can be solved in Õ(m 10/7 log W ) time, where W is the absolute maximum weight of an edge in the graph, which gives the first in over 25 years polynomial improvement in their sparse-graph time complexity.At a high level, our algorithms build on the interior-point method-based framework developed by Mądry (FOCS 2013) for solving unit-capacity maximum flow problem. We develop a refined way to analyze this framework, as well as provide new variants of the underlying preconditioning and perturbation techniques. Consequently, we are able to extend the whole interior-point method-based approach to make it applicable in the weighted graph regime.