The Travelling Salesman Problem is one the most fundamental and most studied problems in approximation algorithms. For more than 30 years, the best algorithm known for general metrics has been Christofides's algorithm with approximation factor of 3 2, even though the so-called Held-Karp LP relaxation of the problem is conjectured to have the integrality gap of only 4 3. Very recently, significant progress has been made for the important special case of graphic metrics, first by Oveis , and then by Momke and Svensson. In this paper, we provide an improved analysis for the approach introduced by Momke and Svensson yielding a bound of 13 9 on the approximation factor, as well as a bound of 19 12+epsilon for any epsilon>0 for a more general Travelling Salesman Path Problem in graphic metrics.
Abstract : An O(n sup 3) heuristic algorithm is described for solving n-city travelling salesman problems (TSP) whose cost matrix satisfies the triangularity condition. The algorithm involves as substeps the computation of a shortest spanning tree of the graph G defining the TSP, and the finding of a minimum cost perfect matching of a certain induced subgraph of G. A worst-case analysis of this heuristic shows that the ratio of the answer obtained to the optimum TSP solution is strictly less than 3 2. This represents a 50 reduction over the value 2 which was the previously best known such ratio for the performance of other polynomial-growth algorithms for the TSP.  We present a framework for approximating the metric TSP based on a novel use of matchings. Traditionally, matchings have been used to add edges in order to make a given graph Eulerian, whereas our approach also allows for the removal of certain edges leading to a decreased cost. For the TSP on graphic metrics (graph-TSP), the approach yields a 1.461-approximation algorithm with respect to the Held-Karp lower bound. For graph-TSP restricted to a class of graphs that contains degree three bounded and claw-free graphs, we show that the integrality gap of the Held-Karp relaxation matches the conjectured ratio 4 3. The framework allows for generalizations in a natural way and also leads to a 1.586-approximation algorithm for the traveling salesman path problem on graphic metrics where the start and end vertices are prespecified.