A lower bound for the shortest Hamiltonean path in directed graphs (Q1814249)

The authors present a Lagrange relaxation of a particular formulation for the shortest Hamiltonian path problem in a directed graph. The relaxation has not the integrality property, but the adequate dual problem defines a lower bound. The dual problem is to find a shortest path with a fixed number of arcs. To solve this one must solve a classical shortest path problem with nonnegative length.