Complete mixed integer linear programming formulations for modularity density based clustering

Modularity density maximization is a clustering method that improves some issues of the commonly-used modularity maximization approach. Recently, some Mixed-Integer Linear Programming (MILP) reformulations have been proposed in the literature for the modularity density maximization problem, but they require as input the solution of a set of auxiliary binary Non-Linear Programs (NLPs). These can become computationally challenging when the size of the instances grows. In this paper we propose and compare some explicit MILP reformulations of these auxiliary binary NLPs, so that the modularity density maximization problem can be completely expressed as MILP. The resolution time is reduced by a factor up to two order of magnitude with respect to the one obtained with the binary NLPs.