On extended formulations for parameterized Steiner trees

We present a novel linear program (LP) for the Steiner Tree problem, where a set of terminal vertices needs to be connected by a minimum weight tree in a graph G = (V, E) with non-negative edge weights. This well-studied problem is NP-hard and therefore does not have a compact extended formulation (describing the convex hull of all Steiner trees) of polynomial size, unless P=NP. On the other hand, Steiner Tree is fixed-parameter tractable (FPT) when parameterized by the number k of terminals, and can be solved in O(3k|V | + 2k|V |2) time via the Dreyfus-Wagner algorithm. A natural question thus is whether the Steiner Tree problem admits an extended formulation of comparable size. We first answer this in the negative by proving a lower bound on the extension complexity of the Steiner Tree polytope, which, for some constant c > 0, implies that no extended formulation of size f(k)2cn exists for any function f. However, we are able to circumvent this lower bound due to the fact that the edge weights are non-negative: we prove that Steiner Tree admits an integral LP with O(3k|E|) variables and constraints. The size of our LP matches the runtime of the Dreyfus-Wagner algorithm, and our poof gives a polyhedral perspective on this classic algorithm. Our proof is simple, and additionally improves on a previous result by Siebert et al. [2018], who gave an integral LP of size O((2k/e)k)|V |O(1)