Solving the maximum clique problem with a hybrid algorithm

A hybrid algorithm for the maximum clique problem is presented. A heuristic is used to generate cliques and these are improved by some simple optimisations and Tabu search. All components of the algorithm make use of an exact algorithm or a pseudoexact algorithm, which is an exact algorithm with some specialised pruning. Pre-processing is useful for some instances. The algorithm is shown to be successful using standard and new benchmarks.