1,116 research outputs found
Counting self-avoiding walks
The connective constant of a graph is the asymptotic growth rate
of the number of self-avoiding walks on from a given starting vertex. We
survey three aspects of the dependence of the connective constant on the
underlying graph . Firstly, when is cubic, we study the effect on
of the Fisher transformation (that is, the replacement of vertices by
triangles). Secondly, we discuss upper and lower bounds for when
is regular. Thirdly, we present strict inequalities for the connective
constants of vertex-transitive graphs , as varies. As a
consequence of the last, the connective constant of a Cayley graph of a
finitely generated group decreases strictly when a new relator is added, and
increases strictly when a non-trivial group element is declared to be a
generator. Special prominence is given to open problems.Comment: Very minor changes for v2. arXiv admin note: text overlap with
arXiv:1301.309
Self-avoiding walks and connective constants
The connective constant of a quasi-transitive graph is the
asymptotic growth rate of the number of self-avoiding walks (SAWs) on from
a given starting vertex. We survey several aspects of the relationship between
the connective constant and the underlying graph .
We present upper and lower bounds for in terms of the
vertex-degree and girth of a transitive graph.
We discuss the question of whether for transitive
cubic graphs (where denotes the golden mean), and we introduce the
Fisher transformation for SAWs (that is, the replacement of vertices by
triangles).
We present strict inequalities for the connective constants
of transitive graphs , as varies.
As a consequence of the last, the connective constant of a Cayley
graph of a finitely generated group decreases strictly when a new relator is
added, and increases strictly when a non-trivial group element is declared to
be a further generator.
We describe so-called graph height functions within an account of
"bridges" for quasi-transitive graphs, and indicate that the bridge constant
equals the connective constant when the graph has a unimodular graph height
function.
A partial answer is given to the question of the locality of
connective constants, based around the existence of unimodular graph height
functions.
Examples are presented of Cayley graphs of finitely presented
groups that possess graph height functions (that are, in addition, harmonic and
unimodular), and that do not.
The review closes with a brief account of the "speed" of SAW.Comment: Accepted version. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with
arXiv:1304.721
Spatial mixing and approximation algorithms for graphs with bounded connective constant
The hard core model in statistical physics is a probability distribution on
independent sets in a graph in which the weight of any independent set I is
proportional to lambda^(|I|), where lambda > 0 is the vertex activity. We show
that there is an intimate connection between the connective constant of a graph
and the phenomenon of strong spatial mixing (decay of correlations) for the
hard core model; specifically, we prove that the hard core model with vertex
activity lambda < lambda_c(Delta + 1) exhibits strong spatial mixing on any
graph of connective constant Delta, irrespective of its maximum degree, and
hence derive an FPTAS for the partition function of the hard core model on such
graphs. Here lambda_c(d) := d^d/(d-1)^(d+1) is the critical activity for the
uniqueness of the Gibbs measure of the hard core model on the infinite d-ary
tree. As an application, we show that the partition function can be efficiently
approximated with high probability on graphs drawn from the random graph model
G(n,d/n) for all lambda < e/d, even though the maximum degree of such graphs is
unbounded with high probability.
We also improve upon Weitz's bounds for strong spatial mixing on bounded
degree graphs (Weitz, 2006) by providing a computationally simple method which
uses known estimates of the connective constant of a lattice to obtain bounds
on the vertex activities lambda for which the hard core model on the lattice
exhibits strong spatial mixing. Using this framework, we improve upon these
bounds for several lattices including the Cartesian lattice in dimensions 3 and
higher.
Our techniques also allow us to relate the threshold for the uniqueness of
the Gibbs measure on a general tree to its branching factor (Lyons, 1989).Comment: 26 pages. In October 2014, this paper was superseded by
arxiv:1410.2595. Before that, an extended abstract of this paper appeared in
Proc. IEEE Symposium on the Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS), 2013, pp.
300-30
Self-avoiding walks and amenability
The connective constant of an infinite transitive graph is the
exponential growth rate of the number of self-avoiding walks from a given
origin. The relationship between connective constants and amenability is
explored in the current work.
Various properties of connective constants depend on the existence of
so-called 'graph height functions', namely: (i) whether is a local
function on certain graphs derived from , (ii) the equality of and
the asymptotic growth rate of bridges, and (iii) whether there exists a
terminating algorithm for approximating to a given degree of accuracy.
In the context of amenable groups, it is proved that the Cayley graphs of
infinite, finitely generated, elementary amenable groups support graph height
functions, which are in addition harmonic. In contrast, the Cayley graph of the
Grigorchuk group, which is amenable but not elementary amenable, does not have
a graph height function.
In the context of non-amenable, transitive graphs, a lower bound is presented
for the connective constant in terms of the spectral bottom of the graph. This
is a strengthening of an earlier result of the same authors. Secondly, using a
percolation inequality of Benjamini, Nachmias, and Peres, it is explained that
the connective constant of a non-amenable, transitive graph with large girth is
close to that of a regular tree. Examples are given of non-amenable groups
without graph height functions, of which one is the Higman group.Comment: v2 differs from v1 in the inclusion of further material concerning
non-amenable graphs, notably an improved lower bound for the connective
constan
Extendable self-avoiding walks
The connective constant mu of a graph is the exponential growth rate of the
number of n-step self-avoiding walks starting at a given vertex. A
self-avoiding walk is said to be forward (respectively, backward) extendable if
it may be extended forwards (respectively, backwards) to a singly infinite
self-avoiding walk. It is called doubly extendable if it may be extended in
both directions simultaneously to a doubly infinite self-avoiding walk. We
prove that the connective constants for forward, backward, and doubly
extendable self-avoiding walks, denoted respectively by mu^F, mu^B, mu^FB,
exist and satisfy mu = mu^F = mu^B = mu^FB for every infinite, locally finite,
strongly connected, quasi-transitive directed graph. The proofs rely on a 1967
result of Furstenberg on dimension, and involve two different arguments
depending on whether or not the graph is unimodular.Comment: Accepted versio
Spatial mixing and the connective constant: optimal bounds
We study the problem of deterministic approximate counting of matchings and independent sets in graphs of bounded connective constant. More generally, we consider the problem of evaluating the partition functions of the monomer-dimer model (which is defined as a weighted sum over all matchings where each matching is given a weight γ|V|−2|M| in terms of a fixed parameter γ called the monomer activity) and the hard core model (which is defined as a weighted sum over all independent sets where an independent set I is given a weight λ^(|I|) in terms of a fixed parameter λ called the vertex activity). The connective constant is a natural measure of the average degree of a graph which has been studied extensively in combinatorics and mathematical physics, and can be bounded by a constant even for certain unbounded degree graphs such as those sampled from the sparse Erdős–Rényi model G(n,d/n). Our main technical contribution is to prove the best possible rates of decay of correlations in the natural probability distributions induced by both the hard core model and the monomer-dimer model in graphs with a given bound on the connective constant. These results on decay of correlations are obtained using a new framework based on the so-called message approach that has been extensively used recently to prove such results for bounded degree graphs. We then use these optimal decay of correlations results to obtain fully polynomial time approximation schemes (FPTASs) for the two problems on graphs of bounded connective constant. In particular, for the monomer-dimer model, we give a deterministic FPTAS for the partition function on all graphs of bounded connective constant for any given value of the monomer activity. The best previously known deterministic algorithm was due to Bayati et al. (Proc. 39th ACM Symp. Theory Comput., pp. 122–127, 2007), and gave the same runtime guarantees as our results but only for the case of bounded degree graphs. For the hard core model, we give an FPTAS for graphs of connective constant Δ whenever the vertex activity λ λ_c(Δ) would imply that NP=RP (Sly and Sun, Ann. Probab. 42(6):2383–2416, 2014). The previous best known result in this direction was in a recent manuscript by a subset of the current authors (Proc. 54th IEEE Symp. Found. Comput. Sci., pp 300–309, 2013), where the result was established under the sub-optimal condition λ < λ_c(Δ+1). Our techniques also allow us to improve upon known bounds for decay of correlations for the hard core model on various regular lattices, including those obtained by Restrepo et al. (Probab Theory Relat Fields 156(1–2):75–99, 2013) for the special case of Z^2 using sophisticated numerically intensive methods tailored to that special case
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