Approximation and Hardness of Polychromatic TSP

Abstract: We introduce the Polychromatic Traveling Salesman Problem (PCTSP), where the input is an edge weighted graph whose vertices are partitioned into $k$ equal-sized color classes, and the goal is to find a minimum-length Hamiltonian cycle that visits the classes in a fixed cyclic order. This generalizes the Bipartite TSP (when $k = 2$) and the classical TSP (when $k = n$). We give a polynomial-time $(3 - 2 * 10^{-36})$-approximation algorithm for metric PCTSP. Complementing this, we show that Euclidean PCTSP is APX-hard even in $R^2$, ruling out the existence of a PTAS unless P = NP.