The two-dimensional Euclidean plane $\mathbb{R}^2$, the ambient space for the Euclidean travelling salesman problem.
Instances For
Length of the cyclic tour visiting the points $x$ in the order given by the permutation $\sigma$: the sum of distances between consecutive points (mod $n$).
Instances For
Length of the shortest tour through the points $x$: the infimum of tourLength x σ
over all permutations $\sigma$.
Instances For
A point $p \in \mathbb{R}^2$ lies in the unit square $[0,1]^2$.
Instances For
Certificate weights $\alpha_i$ in the Rhee–Talagrand TSP concentration argument: twice the sum of the distances from $x_i$ to its successor and predecessor in the tour $\sigma$.
Instances For
The length of any tour is non-negative, as a sum of non-negative distances.
The shortest tour length is at most the length of any specific tour.
The length of the shortest tour is non-negative.
Summing $\mathrm{dist}(x_i, x_{\sigma(\sigma^{-1}(i)+1)})$ over all $i$ recovers the tour length, by reindexing through $\sigma^{-1}$.
Analogous to sum_dist_succ_eq_tourLength: the sum of distances from each $x_i$ to
its predecessor in the tour also recovers the tour length.
The total certificate weight equals four times the tour length.
The tour length is bounded above by the sum of certificate weights (which equals four times the tour length).
The cyclic successor in Fin m agrees with adding one (mod $m$).
Space-filling curve heuristic. There is a universal constant $C$ such that for any point set in $[0,1]^2$ one can find a tour whose squared-edge-lengths sum to at most $C$.
Excursion bound: if $x$ and $y$ agree on some coordinate, then the shortest tour of $x$ exceeds that of $y$ by at most the total certificate weight on the disagreement set.
Unconditional form of the excursion bound: dropping the hypothesis that $x$ and $y$ share a coordinate by using $\sum \alpha_i \ge T(x)$ when they disagree everywhere.
Sum-of-squares control on the certificate weights: if a tour $\sigma$ has bounded squared-edge sum $\le C$, then $\sum_i \alpha_i^2 \le 16 C$.
Theorem 9.6.1 / 9.6.3 (Rhee–Talagrand TSP concentration, certificate form). For every
configuration $x$ in the unit square, there exist non-negative weights $\alpha_i$ such
that the shortest tour is 1-Lipschitz with respect to changes on a subset of indices
bounded by $\sum_{i : x_i \ne y_i} \alpha_i$, and the weights satisfy $\sum_i \alpha_i^2 \le C$
for a universal constant $C$.