Formulating Quadratic Traveling Salesman Problems for Computation

The Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP) is a fundamental combinatorial optimization problem. Adding costs associated with pairs of edges included in a tour gives the Quadratic Traveling Salesman Problem (QTSP). This increases modeling power by allowing, for example, the inclusion of transfer costs between edges. We consider a general version of this problem, where costs are attached to all pairs of edges. We give a brief history of computational solvers, especially in relation to the TSP. For the QTSP, we consider modifying the structure of the quadratic cost input and linearizing the quadratic objective function, with detail on how to generate the modifications and linearizations. We study the impact of these structures on computational efficiency for randomly generated instances, using the Gurobi solver. We find that by making the quadratic cost matrix negative semidefinite, we improve solve times, and that solving the problem as a quadratic minimization problem outperforms linearization approaches.