We present a new piv ot-based algorithm which can be used with minor modification for the enumeration of the facets of the convex hull of a set of points, or for the enumeration of the vertices of an arrangement or of a convex polyhedron, in arbitrary dimension. The algorithm has the following properties: (a) Virtually no additional storage is required beyond the input data; (b) The output list produced is free of duplicates; (c) The algorithm is extremely simple, requires no data structures, and handles all degenerate cases; (d) The running time is output sensitive for non-degenerate inputs; (e) The algorithm is easy to efficiently parallelize. For example, the algorithm finds the v vertices of a polyhedron in R d defined by a nondegenerate system of n inequalities (or dually, the v facets of the convex hull of n points in R d,where each facet contains exactly d given points) in time O(ndv) and O(nd) space. The v vertices in a simple arrangement of n hyperplanes in R d can be found in O(n 2 dv) time and O(nd) space complexity. The algorithm is based on inverting finite pivot algorithms for linear programming.

We consider the concept of triangulation of an oriented matroid. We provide a definition which generalizes the previous ones by Billera-- Munson and by Anderson and which specializes to the usual notion of triangulation (or simplicial fan) in the realizable case. Then we study the relation existing between triangulations of an oriented matroid M and extensions of its dual M , via the so-called lifting triangulations. We show that this duality behaves particularly well in the class of Lawrence matroid polytopes. In particular, that the extension space conjecture for realizable oriented matroids posed by Sturmfels and Ziegler is equivalent to the restriction to Lawrence polytopes of the Generalized Baues problem for subdivisions of polytopes. We finish showing examples and a combinatorial characterization of lifting triangulations. Introduction Matroids (see [23]) and oriented matroids (see [8]) are axiomatic abstract models for combinatorial geometry over general fields and ordere...

this paper is to present mathematical ideas and

A combinatorial abstraction of the linear complementarity theory in the setting of oriented matroids was rst considered by M.J. Todd. In this paper, we take a fresh look at this abstraction, and attempt to give a simple treatment of the combinatorial theory of linear complementarity. We obtain new theorems, proofs and algorithms in oriented matroids whose specializations to the linear case are also new. For this, the notion of suciency of square matrices, introduced by Cottle, Pang and Venkateswaran, is extended to oriented matroids. Then, we prove a sort of duality theorem for oriented matroids, which roughly states: exactly one of the primal and the dual system has a complementary solution if the associated oriented matroid satisfies "weak" sufficiency. We give two different proofs for this theorem, an elementary inductive proof and an algorithmic proof using the criss-cross method which solves one of the primal or dual problem by using surprisingly simple pivot rules (without any pertur...

We discuss methods for the generation of oriented matroids and of isomorphism classes of oriented matroids. Our methods are based on single element extensions and graph theoretical representations of oriented matroids, and all these methods work in general rank and for nonuniform and uniform oriented matroids as well. We consider two types of graphs, cocircuit graphs and tope graphs, and discuss the single element extensions in terms of localizations which can be viewed as partitions of the vertex sets of the graphs. Whereas localizations of the cocircuit graph are well characterized, there is no graph theoretical characterization known for localizations of the tope graph. In this paper we prove a connectedness property for tope graph localizations and use this for the design of algorithms for the generation of single element extensions by use of tope graphs. Furthermore we discuss similar algorithms which use the cocircuit graph. The characterization of localizations of cocircuit graphs nally leads to a backtracking algorithm which is a simple and efficient method for the generation of single element extensions. We compare this method with a recent algorithm of Bokowski and Guedes de Oliveira for uniform oriented matroids.

The purpose of this paper is to survey the various pivot rules of the simplex method or its variants that have been developed in the last two decades, starting from the appearance of the minimal index rule of Bland. We are mainly concerned with the finiteness property of simplex type pivot rules. There are some other important topics in linear programming, e.g. complexity theory or implementations, that are not included in the scope of this paper. We do not discuss ellipsoid methods nor interior point methods. Well known classical results concerning the simplex method are also not particularly discussed in this survey, but the connection between the new methods and the classical ones are discussed if there is any. In this paper we discuss three classes of recently developed pivot rules for linear programming. The first class (the largest one) of the pivot rules we discuss is the class of essentially combinatorial pivot rules. Namely these rules only use labeling and signs of the variab...

We devise a new simplex pivot rule which has interesting theoretical properties. Beginning with a basic feasible solution, and any nonbasic variable having a negative reduced cost, the pivot rule produces a sequence of pivots such that ultimately the originally chosen nonbasic variable enters the basis, and all reduced costs which were originally nonnegative remain nonnegative. The pivot rule thus monotonically builds up to a dual feasible, and hence optimal, basis. A surprising property of the pivot rule is that the pivot sequence results in intermediate bases which are neither primal nor dual feasible. We prove correctness of the procedure, give a geometric interpretation, and relate it to other pivoting rules for linear programming.

In this paper we generalize the so-called first-in-last-out pivot rule and the most-often-selected-variable pivot rule for the simplex method, as proposed in Zhang [13], to the crisscross pivot setting where neither the primal nor the dual feasibility is preserved. The finiteness of the new criss-cross pivot variants is proven.

The cyclic zonotope Z…n; d † is the zonotope in R d generated by any ndistinct vectors of the form …1; t; t2;...; td 1 †. It is proved that the refinement poset of all proper zonotopal subdivisions of Z…n; d † which are induced by the canonical projection p: Z…n; d0 †!Z…n; d†, in the sense of Billera and Sturmfels, is homotopy equivalent to a sphere and that any zonotopal subdivision of Z…n; d † is shellable. The first statement gives an affirmative answer to the generalized Baues problem in a new special case and refines a theorem of Sturmfels and Ziegler on the extension space of an alternating oriented matroid. An important ingredient in the proofs is the fact that all zonotopal subdivisions of Z…n; d † are stackable in a suitable direction. It is shown that, in general, a zonotopal subdivision is stackable in a given direction if and only if a certain associated oriented matroid program is Euclidean, in the sense of Edmonds and Mandel.

Abstract. This paper deals with a geometric construction of algebraic non-realizability proofs for certain oriented matroids. As main result we obtain an algorithm which generates a (bi-quadratic) final polynomial [3], [5] for any non-euclidean oriented matroid. Here we apply the results of Edmonds, Fukuda and Mandel [6], [7] concerning non-degenerate cycling of linear programms in non-euclidean oriented matroids. 1.