Ricardo D. Katz

Duality Between Invariant Spaces for Max-Plus Linear Discrete Event Systems

We extend the notions of conditioned and controlled invariant spaces to linear dynamical systems over the max-plus or tropical semiring. We establish a duality theorem relating both notions, which we use to construct dynamic observers. These are useful in situations in which some of the system coefficients may vary within certain intervals. The results are illustrated by an application to a manufacturing system.

Max-plus convex geometry

Max-plus analogues of linear spaces, convex sets, and polyhedra have appeared in several works. We survey their main geometrical properties, including max-plus versions of the separation theorem, existence of linear and non-linear projectors, max-plus analogues of the Minkowski-Weyl theorem, and the characterization of the analogues of “simplicial” cones in terms of distributive lattices.

Tropical linear-fractional programming and parametric mean payoff games

Tropical polyhedra have been recently used to represent disjunctive invariants in static analysis. To handle larger instances, tropical analogues of classical linear programming results need to be developed. This motivation leads us to study the tropical analogue of the classical linear-fractional programming problem. We construct an associated parametric mean payoff game problem, and show that the optimality of a given point, or the unboundedness of the problem, can be certified by exhibiting a strategy for one of the players having certain infinitesimal properties (involving the value of the game and its derivative) that we characterize combinatorially. We use this idea to design a Newton-like algorithm to solve tropical linear-fractional programming problems, by reduction to a sequence of auxiliary mean payoff game problems.

The number of extreme points of tropical polyhedra

The celebrated upper bound theorem of McMullen determines the maximal number of extreme points of a polyhedron in terms of its dimension and the number of constraints which define it, showing that the maximum is attained by the polar of the cyclic polytope. We show that the same bound is valid in the tropical setting, up to a trivial modification. Then, we study the tropical analogues of the polars of a family of cyclic polytopes equipped with a sign pattern. We construct bijections between the extreme points of these polars and lattice paths depending on the sign pattern, from which we deduce explicit bounds for the number of extreme points, showing in particular that the upper bound is asymptotically tight as the dimension tends to infinity, keeping the number of constraints fixed. When transposed to the classical case, the previous constructions yield some lattice path generalizations of Gales evenness criterion.

The tropical analogue of polar cones

We study the max-plus or tropical analogue of the notion of polar: the polar of a cone represents the set of linear inequalities satisfied by its elements. We establish an analogue of the bipolar theorem, which characterizes all the inequalities satisfied by the elements of a tropical convex cone. We derive this characterization from a new separation theorem. We also establish variants of these results concerning systems of linear equalities.

Tropical polar cones, hypergraph transversals, and mean payoff games☆

We discuss the tropical analogues of several basic questions of convex duality. In particular, the polar of a tropical polyhedral cone represents the set of linear inequalities that its elements satisfy. We characterize the extreme rays of the polar in terms of certain minimal set covers which may be thought of as weighted generalizations of minimal transversals in hypergraphs. We also give a tropical analogue of Farkas lemma, which allows one to check whether a linear inequality is implied by a finite family of linear inequalities. Here, the certificate is a strategy of a mean payoff game. We discuss examples, showing that the number of extreme rays of the polar of the tropical cyclic polyhedral cone is polynomially bounded, and that there is no unique minimal system of inequalities defining a given tropical polyhedral cone.

Vertex adjacencies in the set covering polyhedron

We describe the adjacency of vertices of the (unbounded version of the) set covering polyhedron, in a similar way to the description given by Chvtal for the stable set polytope. We find a sufficient condition for adjacency, and characterize it with similar conditions in the case where the underlying matrix is row circular. We apply our findings to show a new infinite family of minimally nonideal matrices.

Characterization of tropical hemispaces by (P,R)-decompositions

Abstract We consider tropical hemispaces, defined as tropically convex sets whose complements are also tropically convex, and tropical semispaces, defined as maximal tropically convex sets not containing a given point. We introduce the concept of ( P , R ) -decomposition. This yields (to our knowledge) a new kind of representation of tropically convex sets extending the classical idea of representing convex sets by means of extreme points and rays. We characterize tropical hemispaces as tropically convex sets that admit a ( P , R ) -decomposition of certain kind. In this characterization, with each tropical hemispace we associate a matrix with coefficients in the completed tropical semifield, satisfying an extended rank-one condition. Our proof techniques are based on homogenization (lifting a convex set to a cone), and the relation between tropical hemispaces and semispaces.

Tropical Fourier-Motzkin Elimination, with an Application to Real-Time Verification

We introduce a generalization of tropical polyhedra able to express both strict and non-strict inequalities. Such inequalities are handled by means of a semiring of germs (encoding infinitesimal perturbations). We develop a tropical analogue of Fourier-Motzkin elimination from which we derive geometrical properties of these polyhedra. In particular, we show that they coincide with the tropically convex union of (non-necessarily closed) cells that are convex both classically and tropically. We also prove that the redundant inequalities produced when performing successive elimination steps can be dynamically deleted by reduction to mean payoff game problems. As a complement, we provide a coarser (polynomial time) deletion procedure which is enough to arrive at a simply exponential bound for the total execution time. These algorithms are illustrated by an application to real-time systems (reachability analysis of timed automata).

Addendum to “Vertex adjacencies in the set covering polyhedron” [Discrete Appl. Math. 218 (2017) 40–56]

We study the relationship between the vertices of an up-monotone polyhedron and those of the polytope obtained by truncating it with the unit hypercube. When the original polyhedron has binary vertices, we characterize the vertices of the truncated polytope in terms of the original vertices, prove their integrality, and show the equivalence of adjacencies in either polyhedron. We conclude by applying our findings to settle a claim in the original paper.