traveling salesman problem

traveling salesman problem, an optimization problem in graph theory in which the nodes (cities) of a graph are connected by directed edges (routes), where the weight of an edge indicates the distance between two cities. The problem is to find a path that visits each city once, returns to the starting city, and minimizes the distance traveled. The only known general solution algorithm that guarantees the shortest path requires a solution time that grows exponentially with the problem size (i.e., the number of cities). This is an example of an NP-complete problem (from nonpolynomial), for which no known efficient (i.e., polynomial time) algorithm exists.