Abstract
In this paper we investigate k-submodular functions. This natural family of discrete functions includes submodular and bisubmodular functions as the special cases k = 1 and k = 2 respectively.
In particular we generalize the known Min-Max-Theorem for submodular and bisubmodular functions. This theorem asserts that the minimum of the (bi)submodular function can be found by solving a maximization problem over a (bi)submodular polyhedron. We define a k-submodular polyhedron, prove a Min-Max-Theorem for k-submodular functions, and give a greedy algorithm to construct the vertices of the polyhedron.
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Huber, A., Kolmogorov, V. (2012). Towards Minimizing k-Submodular Functions. In: Mahjoub, A.R., Markakis, V., Milis, I., Paschos, V.T. (eds) Combinatorial Optimization. ISCO 2012. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 7422. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-32147-4_40
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-32147-4_40
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