A Parallel Evolutionary Algorithm Framework for Graph $k$-CUT Problems

Abstract

Graph k-CUT problems include many important variants whose objectives combine cut value, volume, and cardinality terms in different ways. Most existing algorithms are designed for individual formulations, which limits their transferability across related models. In this paper, we organize a broad family of graph partitioning problems into two classes, MaxGCP and MinGCP, according to their optimization orientation and balance-related structure. Based on this classification, we propose a unified Parallel Evolutionary Algorithm Framework (PEAF). This framework combines structure-inheriting crossover operators, a hierarchical mutation mechanism based on the Multiple Mutation Heuristic (MMH) and the Auxiliary Cut Mutation Heuristic (ACMH), and a diversity-preserving selection strategy. Extensive experiments on G-set with k \in\{2, 3, 4, 5\} show that PEAF-ACMH consistently outperforms Gurobi on nine representative k-CUT problems. For MaxGCP, PEAF-ACMH improves several best-known solutions for Max-k-Cut with k \geq 3, and through numerical bounds derived from its relation to Max-k-Cut, verifies the high quality of the obtained solutions for Judicious-k-Partition and AntiCheeger-k-Cut. The results further indicate that Judicious-k-Partition usually yields more balanced partitions than AntiCheeger-k-Cut. For MinGCP, theoretical and computational comparisons show that Cheeger-k-Cut and Sparsest-k-Cut produce more balanced partitions than Normalized-k-Cut and Ratio-k-Cut, respectively. PEAF-ACMH also obtains highly similar partitions for Min-k-Cut and MinMax-k-Cut within short running times, providing numerical evidence for their structural affinity. These results demonstrate that PEAF is both an effective unified solver and a useful tool for revealing structural properties of graph k-CUT models.