Proving integrality gaps without knowing the linear program

S. Arora, B. Bollobas, L. Lovasz
The 43rd Annual IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science, 2002. Proceedings.  
Proving integrality gaps for linear relaxations of NP optimization problems is a difficult task and usually undertaken on a case-by-case basis. We initiate a more systematic approach. We prove an integrality gap of 2 − o(1) for three families of linear relaxations for VERTEX COVER, and our methods seem relevant to other problems as well.
doi:10.1109/sfcs.2002.1181954 dblp:conf/focs/AroraBL02 fatcat:swdn6r3vebcljhe4k5om6b2p2i