ON THE MATRIX-CUT RANK OF POLYHEDRA

Lov^sz and Schrijver (1991) described a semidcfinile operator for generating strong valid inequalities for the 0-! vectors in a prescribed polyhedron. Among their resuli.s. they showed ihai ii iterations of the operator are .sufficient to generate the convex hull ot" O-l vectors contained in a polyhedron in /i-space. We give a simple example, having Chvdtal rank 1. tliat meetii this worst case bound of ;i. We describe another example requiring « iterations even when combinini; ihe scniidefinite and Gomory-Chviltal operators. Thi.s second example is used to show ihai the standard linear programming relaxation of a A-city traveling salesman problem requires at least [k/^l iterations of the combined operaior; Lhis bound is best possible, up to a consiani factor, as A HI iterations suffice.