The mean field traveling salesman and related problems

Abstract

The edges of a complete graph on n vertices are assigned i.i.d. random costs from a distribution for which the interval [0, t] has probability asymptotic to t as t→0 through positive values. In this so called pseudo-dimension 1 mean field model, we study several optimization problems, of which the traveling salesman is the best known. We prove that, as n→∞, the cost of the minimum traveling salesman tour converges in probability to a certain number, approximately 2.0415, which is characterized analytically.