Reachability in Vector Addition Systems is Primitive-Recursive in Fixed Dimension

The reachability problem in vector addition systems is a central question, not only for the static verification of these systems, but also for many inter-reducible decision problems occurring in various fields. The currently best known upper bound on this problem is not primitive-recursive, even when considering systems of fixed dimension. We provide significant refinements to the classical decomposition algorithm of Mayr, Kosaraju, and Lambert and to its termination proof, which yield an ACKERMANN upper bound in the general case, and primitive-recursive upper bounds in fixed dimension. While this does not match the currently best known TOWER lower bound for reachability, it is optimal for related problems

Sampling the Fermi statistics and other conditional product measures

Through a Metropolis-like algorithm with single step computational cost of order one, we build a Markov chain that relaxes to the canonical Fermi statistics for k non-interacting particles among m energy levels. Uniformly over the temperature as well as the energy values and degeneracies of the energy levels we give an explicit upper bound with leading term km(ln k) for the mixing time of the dynamics. We obtain such construction and upper bound as a special case of a general result on (non-homogeneous) products of ultra log-concave measures (like binomial or Poisson laws) with a global constraint. As a consequence of this general result we also obtain a disorder-independent upper bound on the mixing time of a simple exclusion process on the complete graph with site disorder. This general result is based on an elementary coupling argument and extended to (non-homogeneous) products of log-concave measures.Comment: 21 page

Bounds on the Speed and on Regeneration Times for Certain Processes on Regular Trees

We develop a technique that provides a lower bound on the speed of transient random walk in a random environment on regular trees. A refinement of this technique yields upper bounds on the first regeneration level and regeneration time. In particular, a lower and upper bound on the covariance in the annealed invariance principle follows. We emphasize the fact that our methods are general and also apply in the case of once-reinforced random walk. Durrett, Kesten and Limic (2002) prove an upper bound of the form $b/(b+\delta)$ for the speed on the $b$-ary tree, where $\delta$ is the reinforcement parameter. For $\delta>1$ we provide a lower bound of the form $\gamma^2 b/(b+\delta)$, where $\gamma$ is the survival probability of an associated branching process.Comment: 21 page

A refined error analysis for fixed-degree polynomial optimization over the simplex

We consider the problem of minimizing a fixed-degree polynomial over the standard simplex. This problem is well known to be NP-hard, since it contains the maximum stable set problem in combinatorial optimization as a special case. In this paper, we revisit a known upper bound obtained by taking the minimum value on a regular grid, and a known lower bound based on P\'olya's representation theorem. More precisely, we consider the difference between these two bounds and we provide upper bounds for this difference in terms of the range of function values. Our results refine the known upper bounds in the quadratic and cubic cases, and they asymptotically refine the known upper bound in the general case.Comment: 13 page

Determining global mean-first-passage time of random walks on Vicsek fractals using eigenvalues of Laplacian matrices

The family of Vicsek fractals is one of the most important and frequently-studied regular fractal classes, and it is of considerable interest to understand the dynamical processes on this treelike fractal family. In this paper, we investigate discrete random walks on the Vicsek fractals, with the aim to obtain the exact solutions to the global mean first-passage time (GMFPT), defined as the average of first-passage time (FPT) between two nodes over the whole family of fractals. Based on the known connections between FPTs, effective resistance, and the eigenvalues of graph Laplacian, we determine implicitly the GMFPT of the Vicsek fractals, which is corroborated by numerical results. The obtained closed-form solution shows that the GMFPT approximately grows as a power-law function with system size (number of all nodes), with the exponent lies between 1 and 2. We then provide both the upper bound and lower bound for GMFPT of general trees, and show that leading behavior of the upper bound is the square of system size and the dominating scaling of the lower bound varies linearly with system size. We also show that the upper bound can be achieved in linear chains and the lower bound can be reached in star graphs. This study provides a comprehensive understanding of random walks on the Vicsek fractals and general treelike networks.Comment: Definitive version accepted for publication in Physical Review