MATHEMATICAL ENGINEERING TECHNICAL REPORTS Sign-Solvable Linear Complementarity Problems

This paper presents a connection between qualitative matrix theory and linear complementarity problems (LCPs). An LCP is said to be sign-solvable if the set of the sign patterns of the solutions is uniquely determined by the sign patterns of the given coefficients. We provide a characterization for sign-solvable LCPs such that the coefficient matrix has nonzero diagonals, which can be tested in polynomial time. This characterization leads to an efficient combinatorial algorithm to find the sign pattern of a solution for these LCPs. The algorithm runs in O(γ) time, where γ is the number of the nonzero coefficients.