38 research outputs found
Deterministic polynomial-time approximation algorithms for partition functions and graph polynomials
In this paper we show a new way of constructing deterministic polynomial-time
approximation algorithms for computing complex-valued evaluations of a large
class of graph polynomials on bounded degree graphs. In particular, our
approach works for the Tutte polynomial and independence polynomial, as well as
partition functions of complex-valued spin and edge-coloring models.
More specifically, we define a large class of graph polynomials
and show that if and there is a disk centered at zero in the
complex plane such that does not vanish on for all bounded degree
graphs , then for each in the interior of there exists a
deterministic polynomial-time approximation algorithm for evaluating at
. This gives an explicit connection between absence of zeros of graph
polynomials and the existence of efficient approximation algorithms, allowing
us to show new relationships between well-known conjectures.
Our work builds on a recent line of work initiated by. Barvinok, which
provides a new algorithmic approach besides the existing Markov chain Monte
Carlo method and the correlation decay method for these types of problems.Comment: 27 pages; some changes have been made based on referee comments. In
particular a tiny error in Proposition 4.4 has been fixed. The introduction
and concluding remarks have also been rewritten to incorporate the most
recent developments. Accepted for publication in SIAM Journal on Computatio
Approximating the Permanent of a Random Matrix with Vanishing Mean
We show an algorithm for computing the permanent of a random matrix with
vanishing mean in quasi-polynomial time. Among special cases are the Gaussian,
and biased-Bernoulli random matrices with mean 1/lnln(n)^{1/8}. In addition, we
can compute the permanent of a random matrix with mean 1/poly(ln(n)) in time
2^{O(n^{\eps})} for any small constant \eps>0. Our algorithm counters the
intuition that the permanent is hard because of the "sign problem" - namely the
interference between entries of a matrix with different signs. A major open
question then remains whether one can provide an efficient algorithm for random
matrices of mean 1/poly(n), whose conjectured #P-hardness is one of the
baseline assumptions of the BosonSampling paradigm
Weighted counting of solutions to sparse systems of equations
Given complex numbers , we define the weight of a
set of 0-1 vectors as the sum of over all
vectors in . We present an algorithm, which for a set
defined by a system of homogeneous linear equations with at most
variables per equation and at most equations per variable, computes
within relative error in time
provided for an absolute constant and all . A similar algorithm is constructed for computing
the weight of a linear code over . Applications include counting
weighted perfect matchings in hypergraphs, counting weighted graph
homomorphisms, computing weight enumerators of linear codes with sparse code
generating matrices, and computing the partition functions of the ferromagnetic
Potts model at low temperatures and of the hard-core model at high fugacity on
biregular bipartite graphs.Comment: The exposition is improved, a couple of inaccuracies correcte