Integer programs with nearly totally unimodular matrices: the cographic case

Abstract: It is a notorious open question whether integer programs (IPs), with an integer coefficient matrix $M$ whose subdeterminants are all bounded by a constant $\Delta$ in absolute value, can be solved in polynomial time. We answer this question in the affirmative if we further require that, by removing a constant number of rows and columns from $M$, one obtains a submatrix $A$ that is the transpose of a network matrix. Our approach focuses on the case where $A$ arises from $M$ after removing $k$ rows only, where $k$ is a constant. We achieve our result in two main steps, the first related to the theory of IPs and the second related to graph minor theory. First, we derive a strong proximity result for the case where $A$ is a general totally unimodular matrix: Given an optimal solution of the linear programming relaxation, an optimal solution to the IP can be obtained by finding a constant number of augmentations by circuits of $[A\; I]$. Second, for the case where $A$ is transpose of a network matrix, we reformulate the problem as a maximum constrained integer potential problem on a graph $G$. We observe that if $G$ is $2$-connected, then it has no rooted $K_{2,t}$-minor for $t = \Omega(k \Delta)$. We leverage this to obtain a tree-decomposition of $G$ into highly structured graphs for which we can solve the problem locally. This allows us to solve the global problem via dynamic programming.