LinearizeLLM: An Agent-Based Framework for LLM-Driven Exact Linear Reformulation of Nonlinear Optimization Problems

Reformulating nonlinear optimization problems into solver-ready linear optimization problems is often necessary for practical applications, but the process is often manual and requires domain expertise. We propose LinearizeLLM, an agent-based LLM framework that produces solver-ready linear reformulations of nonlinear optimization problems. Agents first detect the nonlinearity pattern (e.g., bilinear products) and apply nonlinearity pattern-aware reformulation techniques, selecting the most suitable linearization technique. We benchmark on 40 instances: 27 derived from ComplexOR by injecting exactly-linearizable operators, and 13 automatically generated instances with deeply nested nonlinearities. LinearizeLLM achieves 73\% mean end-to-end overall success (OSR) across nonlinearity depths (8.3x higher than a one-shot LLM baseline; 4.3x higher than Pyomo). The results suggest that a set of pattern-specialized agents can automate linearization, supporting natural-language-based modeling of nonlinear optimization.