13 research outputs found
FPTAS for Hardcore and Ising Models on Hypergraphs
Hardcore and Ising models are two most important families of two state spin
systems in statistic physics. Partition function of spin systems is the center
concept in statistic physics which connects microscopic particles and their
interactions with their macroscopic and statistical properties of materials
such as energy, entropy, ferromagnetism, etc. If each local interaction of the
system involves only two particles, the system can be described by a graph. In
this case, fully polynomial-time approximation scheme (FPTAS) for computing the
partition function of both hardcore and anti-ferromagnetic Ising model was
designed up to the uniqueness condition of the system. These result are the
best possible since approximately computing the partition function beyond this
threshold is NP-hard. In this paper, we generalize these results to general
physics systems, where each local interaction may involves multiple particles.
Such systems are described by hypergraphs. For hardcore model, we also provide
FPTAS up to the uniqueness condition, and for anti-ferromagnetic Ising model,
we obtain FPTAS where a slightly stronger condition holds
Spatial Mixing of Coloring Random Graphs
We study the strong spatial mixing (decay of correlation) property of proper
-colorings of random graph with a fixed . The strong spatial
mixing of coloring and related models have been extensively studied on graphs
with bounded maximum degree. However, for typical classes of graphs with
bounded average degree, such as , an easy counterexample shows that
colorings do not exhibit strong spatial mixing with high probability.
Nevertheless, we show that for with and
sufficiently large , with high probability proper -colorings of
random graph exhibit strong spatial mixing with respect to an
arbitrarily fixed vertex. This is the first strong spatial mixing result for
colorings of graphs with unbounded maximum degree. Our analysis of strong
spatial mixing establishes a block-wise correlation decay instead of the
standard point-wise decay, which may be of interest by itself, especially for
graphs with unbounded degree
FPTAS for Counting Monotone CNF
A monotone CNF formula is a Boolean formula in conjunctive normal form where
each variable appears positively. We design a deterministic fully
polynomial-time approximation scheme (FPTAS) for counting the number of
satisfying assignments for a given monotone CNF formula when each variable
appears in at most clauses. Equivalently, this is also an FPTAS for
counting set covers where each set contains at most elements. If we allow
variables to appear in a maximum of clauses (or sets to contain
elements), it is NP-hard to approximate it. Thus, this gives a complete
understanding of the approximability of counting for monotone CNF formulas. It
is also an important step towards a complete characterization of the
approximability for all bounded degree Boolean #CSP problems. In addition, we
study the hypergraph matching problem, which arises naturally towards a
complete classification of bounded degree Boolean #CSP problems, and show an
FPTAS for counting 3D matchings of hypergraphs with maximum degree .
Our main technique is correlation decay, a powerful tool to design
deterministic FPTAS for counting problems defined by local constraints among a
number of variables. All previous uses of this design technique fall into two
categories: each constraint involves at most two variables, such as independent
set, coloring, and spin systems in general; or each variable appears in at most
two constraints, such as matching, edge cover, and holant problem in general.
The CNF problems studied here have more complicated structures than these
problems and require new design and proof techniques. As it turns out, the
technique we developed for the CNF problem also works for the hypergraph
matching problem. We believe that it may also find applications in other CSP or
more general counting problems.Comment: 24 pages, 2 figures. version 1=>2: minor edits, highlighted the
picture of set cover/packing, and an implication of our previous result in 3D
matchin
Approximate Counting, the Lovasz Local Lemma and Inference in Graphical Models
In this paper we introduce a new approach for approximately counting in
bounded degree systems with higher-order constraints. Our main result is an
algorithm to approximately count the number of solutions to a CNF formula
when the width is logarithmic in the maximum degree. This closes an
exponential gap between the known upper and lower bounds.
Moreover our algorithm extends straightforwardly to approximate sampling,
which shows that under Lov\'asz Local Lemma-like conditions it is not only
possible to find a satisfying assignment, it is also possible to generate one
approximately uniformly at random from the set of all satisfying assignments.
Our approach is a significant departure from earlier techniques in approximate
counting, and is based on a framework to bootstrap an oracle for computing
marginal probabilities on individual variables. Finally, we give an application
of our results to show that it is algorithmically possible to sample from the
posterior distribution in an interesting class of graphical models.Comment: 25 pages, 2 figure
Counting hypergraph matchings up to uniqueness threshold
We study the problem of approximately counting matchings in hypergraphs of
bounded maximum degree and maximum size of hyperedges. With an activity
parameter , each matching is assigned a weight .
The counting problem is formulated as computing a partition function that gives
the sum of the weights of all matchings in a hypergraph. This problem unifies
two extensively studied statistical physics models in approximate counting: the
hardcore model (graph independent sets) and the monomer-dimer model (graph
matchings).
For this model, the critical activity
is the threshold for the uniqueness of Gibbs measures on the infinite
-uniform -regular hypertree. Consider hypergraphs of maximum
degree at most and maximum size of hyperedges at most . We show that
when , there is an FPTAS for computing the partition
function; and when , there is a PTAS for computing the
log-partition function. These algorithms are based on the decay of correlation
(strong spatial mixing) property of Gibbs distributions. When , there is no PRAS for the partition function or the log-partition
function unless NPRP.
Towards obtaining a sharp transition of computational complexity of
approximate counting, we study the local convergence from a sequence of finite
hypergraphs to the infinite lattice with specified symmetry. We show a
surprising connection between the local convergence and the reversibility of a
natural random walk. This leads us to a barrier for the hardness result: The
non-uniqueness of infinite Gibbs measure is not realizable by any finite
gadgets
FPTAS for Weighted Fibonacci Gates and Its Applications
Fibonacci gate problems have severed as computation primitives to solve other
problems by holographic algorithm and play an important role in the dichotomy
of exact counting for Holant and CSP frameworks. We generalize them to weighted
cases and allow each vertex function to have different parameters, which is a
much boarder family and #P-hard for exactly counting. We design a fully
polynomial-time approximation scheme (FPTAS) for this generalization by
correlation decay technique. This is the first deterministic FPTAS for
approximate counting in the general Holant framework without a degree bound. We
also formally introduce holographic reduction in the study of approximate
counting and these weighted Fibonacci gate problems serve as computation
primitives for approximate counting. Under holographic reduction, we obtain
FPTAS for other Holant problems and spin problems. One important application is
developing an FPTAS for a large range of ferromagnetic two-state spin systems.
This is the first deterministic FPTAS in the ferromagnetic range for two-state
spin systems without a degree bound. Besides these algorithms, we also develop
several new tools and techniques to establish the correlation decay property,
which are applicable in other problems