A Faster Scaling Algorithm for Minimizing Submodular Functions

Combinatorial strongly polynomial algorithms for minimizing submodular functions have been developed by Iwata, Fleischer, and Fujishige (IFF) and by Schrijver. The IFF algorithm employs a scaling scheme for submodular functions, whereas Schrijver's algorithm achieves strongly polynomial bound with the aid of distance labeling. Subsequently, Fleischer and Iwata have described a push/relabel version of Schrijver's algorithm to improve its time complexity. This paper combines the scaling scheme with the push/relabel framework to yield a faster combinatorial algorithm for submodular function minimization. The resulting algorithm improves over the previously best known bound by essentially a linear factor in the size of the underlying ground set.