Replica Symmetry and Combinatorial Optimization

We establish the soundness of the replica symmetric ansatz introduced by M. Mezard and G. Parisi for minimum matching and the traveling salesman problem in the pseudo-dimension d mean field model for d\geq 1. The case d=1 of minimum matching corresponds to the pi^2/6 limit for the assignment problem established by D. Aldous in 2001, and the analogous limit for the d=1 case of TSP was recently established by the author with a different method. We introduce a game-theoretical framework by which we prove the correctness of the replica-cavity prediction of the corresponding limits also for d>1.