Abstract : We disprove a continuous analog of the Hirsch conjecture proposed by Deza, Terlaky and Zinchenko, by constructing a family of linear programs with 3r+4 inequalities in dimension 2r+2 where the central path has a total curvature in Ω(2^r/r). Our method is to tropicalize the central path in linear programming. The tropical central path is the piecewise-linear limit of the central paths of parameterized families of linear programs viewed through logarithmic glasses.
Xavier Allamigeon, Pascal Benchimol, Stephane Gaubert, Michael Joswig. Long and Winding Central Paths. SIAM Conference on Control and its Applications (SIAM CT’15), Jul 2015, Paris, France. ⟨hal-01263337⟩