An Improved Approximation Algorithm for Metric Triangle Packing

Given an edge-weighted metric complete graph with n vertices, the maximum weight metric triangle packing problem is to find a set of $n/3$ vertex-disjoint triangles with the total weight of all triangles in the packing maximized. Several simple methods can lead to a 2/3-approximation ratio. However, this barrier is not easy to break. Chen et al. proposed a randomized approximation algorithm with an expected ratio of (0.66768-ε) for any constant ε>0. In this paper, we improve the approximation ratio to (0.66835-ε). Furthermore, we can derandomize our algorithm.