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I'm currently studying a paper which uses extensively the term 'min-max theorems' in graph theory, and claims to present a tool allowing to generalize these theorems. (here is the link to the paper if needed)

Among those, we can find for example :

  • The max-flow-min cut theorem.
  • Edmond's disjoint arborescences theorem (link).

I have some intuition about what a min-max theorem would be, but I can't come with a concise and precise definition.

My question is : what would be a definition of such a family of theorems ?

And a second question along : is this min-max theorem concept always linked to the strong duality theorem, meaning that they mainly state that one problem is actually the dual of the other, like the max-flow-min-cut is ?

m.raynal
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1 Answers1

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A min-max theorem is simply a theorem that says that the minimum value possible for one quantity is the maximum value possible for some other. For example,

  • Max-flow min-cut says that the value of the biggest flow between two vertices in a weighted graph is equal to the value of the minimum cut that separates them. Closely related, Menger's Theorem says that the maximum number of edge-disjoint paths between two vertex sets is equal to the size of the minimum cut that separates them.

  • Edmonds' Theorem says that the maximum number of edge-disjoint spanning arborescences is equal to the minimum value of something called $\varrho(X)$ over certain non-empty vertex sets.

  • The cops and robbers characterization of treewidth says that the minimum width over all tree decompositions is equal to the maximum number of cops that a robber can escape (er, plus or minus one, probably).

David Richerby
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