Dual mean field search for large scale linear and quadratic knapsack problems

An implementation of mean field annealing to deal with large scale linear and non linear binary optimization problems is given. Mean field annealing is based on the analogy between combinatorial optimization and interacting physical systems at thermal equilibrium. Specifically, a mean field approximation of the Boltzmann distribution given by a Lagrangian that encompass the objective function and the constraints is calculated. The original discrete task is in this way transformed into a continuous variational problem. In our version of mean field annealing, no temperature parameter is used, but a good starting point in the dual space is given by a “thermodynamic limit” argument. The method is tested in linear and quadratic knapsack problems with sizes that are considerably larger than those used in previous studies of mean field annealing. Dual mean field annealing is capable to find high quality solutions in running times that are orders of magnitude shorter than state of the art algorithms. Moreover, as may be expected for a mean field theory, the solutions tend to be more accurate as the number of variables grow.