An enhanced formulation for solving graph coloring problems with the Douglas-Rachford algorithm (Q2176284)

In this paper, the authors study the behavior of the Douglas-Rachford algorithm on the graph vertex-coloring problem. Given a graph and a number of colors, the goal is to find a coloring of the vertices so that all adjacent vertex pairs have different colors. Many problems arising from different fields can be formulated as graph coloring problems. Since the graph coloring problem is proved to be NP-complete, most commonly used solvers rely on heuristics. In spite of the combinatorial nature of this problem, the Douglas-Rachford algorithm was recently shown to be a successful heuristic for solving a wide variety of graph coloring instances, when the problem was cast as a feasibility problem on binary indicator variables. In this work, the authors consider a different formulation, based on semidefinite programming. The much improved performance of the Douglas-Rachford algorithm, with this new approach, is demonstrated through various numerical experiments.