William J. Cook

Jens Vygen

László Lovász

The editors and authors dedicate this book to Bernhard Korte on the occasion of his seventieth birthday. We, the editors, are happy about the overwhelming feedback to our initiative to honor him with this book and with a workshop in Bonn on November 3–7,2008.Althoughthiswouldbeareasontolookback,wewouldratherliketolook forward and see what are the interesting research directions today. This book is written by leading experts in combinatorial optimization. All - pers were carefully reviewed, and eventually twenty-three of the invited papers were accepted for this book. The breadth of topics is typical for the eld: combinatorial optimization builds bridges between areas like combinatorics and graph theory, submodular functions and matroids, network ows and connectivity, approximation algorithms and mat- matical programming, computational geometry and polyhedral combinatorics. All these topics are related, and they are all addressed in this book. Combi- torial optimization is also known for its numerous applications. To limit the scope, however, this book is not primarily about applications, although some are mentioned at various places. Most papers in this volume are surveys that provide an excellent overview of an activeresearcharea,butthisbookalsocontainsmanynewresults.Highlightingmany of the currently most interesting research directions in combinatorial optimization, we hope that this book constitutes a good basis for future research in these areas.

Bonn 2008

Research Trends in Combinatorial Optimization

Bernhard Korte

This well-written textbook on combinatorial optimization puts special emphasis on theoretical results and algorithms with provably good performance, in contrast to heuristics. The book contains complete (but concise) proofs, as well as many deep results, some of which have not appeared in any previous books.

Theory and Algorithms

Combinatorial Optimization

Questo libro di testo di ottimizzazione combinatoria pone in particolare risalto i risultati teorici e gli algoritmi che, al contrario delle euristiche, hanno una garanzia di avere buone prestazioni. Comprende una vasta scelta di argomenti e nasce come riferimento di diversi corsi di ottimizzazione combinatoria sia di base che di livello avanzato. Il libro contiene dimostrazioni complete (ma concise) anche di molti risultati avanzati, alcuni dei quali non sono mai apparsi prima in un libro. Vengono anche trattati molti dei temi di ricerca più attuali e sono riportati molti riferimenti alla letteratura. Quindi questo libro, traduzione della quarta edizione in lingua originale, rappresenta lo stato dell’arte dell’ottimizzazione combinatoria.

Teoria e Algoritmi

Ottimizzazione Combinatoria

Now fully updated in a third edition, this is a comprehensive textbook on combinatorial optimization. It puts special emphasis on theoretical results and algorithms with provably good performance, in contrast to heuristics. The book contains complete but concise proofs, also for many deep results, some of which have not appeared in print before. Recent topics are covered as well, and numerous references are provided. This third edition contains a new chapter on facility location problems, an area which has been extremely active in the past few years. Furthermore there are several new sections and further material on various topics. New exercises and updates in the bibliography were added.

Jens Vygen

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