The nonidealness index of rank-ideal matrices

A polyhedron Q={x:Mx≥1} is integral if all its extreme points have 0, 1 components and in this case the matrix MM is called ideal. When QQ has fractional extreme points, there are different ways of classifying how far MM is away from being ideal, through the polyhedral structure of QQ. In this sense, Argiroffo, Bianchi and Nasini (2006) [1] defined a nonidealness index analogous to an imperfection index due to Gerke and McDiarmid (2001) [10].In this work we determine the nonidealness index of rank-ideal matrices (introduced by the authors (2008)). It is known that evaluating this index is NPNP-hard for any matrix. We provide a tractable way of evaluating it for most circulant matrices, whose blockers are a particular class of rank-ideal matrices, thereby following similar lines as done for the imperfection ratio of webs due to Coulonges, Pêcher and Wagler (2009) [7].Finally, exploiting the properties of this nonidealness index, we identify the facets of the set covering polyhedron of circulant matrices, having maximum strength with respect to the linear relaxation, according to a measure defined by Goemans (1995) [9].