DSP-Transformer: An Approach for Solving the Minimum Dominating Set Problem Based on Attention Mechanism

最小支配集问题在计算机科学与网络优化领域具有广泛应用，但其NP-完全性使得传统启发式方法计算成本高且难以泛化。本文提出了DSP-Transformer，一种基于Transformer结构的深度强化学习求解方法，通过编码器–解码器架构与近似策略优化方法，高效求解最小支配集问题。由于注意力机制更适合捕获图上的潜在关系，相较于传统基于消息传递机制的编码器，本方法在性能上也有显著提升。实验结果表明，该方法在T1基准数据集和ER随机图合成数据集上的表现优于传统启发式算法，能够提供更优质的解，同时显著减少计算成本。DSP-Transformer预训练后可泛化到更大规模的图实例，无需每次重新搜索，展现出深度学习在求解组合优化问题中的巨大潜力。The Minimum Dominating Set Problem has widespread applications in computer science and network optimization. However, its NP-completeness makes traditional heuristic methods computationally expensive and difficult to generalize. In this paper, we propose DSP-Transformer, a deep reinforcement learning approach based on the Transformer architecture, which efficiently solves DSP through an encoder-decoder framework and approximate policy optimization. Since the attention mechanism is better suited for capturing latent relationships in graphs, our approach achieves significant performance improvements over traditional message-passing-based encoders. Experimental results demonstrate that DSP-Transformer outperforms conventional heuristic algorithms on both the T1 benchmark dataset and ER random graphs, providing higher-quality solutions while significantly reducing computational costs. Once pretrained, DSP-Transformer can generalize to larger graph instances without requiring repeated searches, highlighting the potential of deep learning in tackling combinatorial optimization problems.