601 research outputs found
Path Coupling Using Stopping Times and Counting Independent Sets and Colourings in Hypergraphs
We give a new method for analysing the mixing time of a Markov chain using
path coupling with stopping times. We apply this approach to two hypergraph
problems. We show that the Glauber dynamics for independent sets in a
hypergraph mixes rapidly as long as the maximum degree Delta of a vertex and
the minimum size m of an edge satisfy m>= 2Delta+1. We also show that the
Glauber dynamics for proper q-colourings of a hypergraph mixes rapidly if m>= 4
and q > Delta, and if m=3 and q>=1.65Delta. We give related results on the
hardness of exact and approximate counting for both problems.Comment: Simpler proof of main theorem. Improved bound on mixing time. 19
page
The Complexity of Change
Many combinatorial problems can be formulated as "Can I transform
configuration 1 into configuration 2, if certain transformations only are
allowed?". An example of such a question is: given two k-colourings of a graph,
can I transform the first k-colouring into the second one, by recolouring one
vertex at a time, and always maintaining a proper k-colouring? Another example
is: given two solutions of a SAT-instance, can I transform the first solution
into the second one, by changing the truth value one variable at a time, and
always maintaining a solution of the SAT-instance? Other examples can be found
in many classical puzzles, such as the 15-Puzzle and Rubik's Cube.
In this survey we shall give an overview of some older and more recent work
on this type of problem. The emphasis will be on the computational complexity
of the problems: how hard is it to decide if a certain transformation is
possible or not?Comment: 28 pages, 6 figure
Extremal properties of flood-filling games
The problem of determining the number of "flooding operations" required to
make a given coloured graph monochromatic in the one-player combinatorial game
Flood-It has been studied extensively from an algorithmic point of view, but
basic questions about the maximum number of moves that might be required in the
worst case remain unanswered. We begin a systematic investigation of such
questions, with the goal of determining, for a given graph, the maximum number
of moves that may be required, taken over all possible colourings. We give
several upper and lower bounds on this quantity for arbitrary graphs and show
that all of the bounds are tight for trees; we also investigate how much the
upper bounds can be improved if we restrict our attention to graphs with higher
edge-density.Comment: Final version, accepted to DMTC
Guessing Numbers of Odd Cycles
For a given number of colours, , the guessing number of a graph is the
base logarithm of the size of the largest family of colourings of the
vertex set of the graph such that the colour of each vertex can be determined
from the colours of the vertices in its neighbourhood. An upper bound for the
guessing number of the -vertex cycle graph is . It is known that
the guessing number equals whenever is even or is a perfect
square \cite{Christofides2011guessing}. We show that, for any given integer
, if is the largest factor of less than or equal to
, for sufficiently large odd , the guessing number of with
colours is . This answers a question posed by
Christofides and Markstr\"{o}m in 2011 \cite{Christofides2011guessing}. We also
present an explicit protocol which achieves this bound for every . Linking
this to index coding with side information, we deduce that the information
defect of with colours is for sufficiently
large odd . Our results are a generalisation of the case which was
proven in \cite{bar2011index}.Comment: 16 page
The complexity of Free-Flood-It on 2xn boards
We consider the complexity of problems related to the combinatorial game
Free-Flood-It, in which players aim to make a coloured graph monochromatic with
the minimum possible number of flooding operations. Our main result is that
computing the length of an optimal sequence is fixed parameter tractable (with
the number of colours present as a parameter) when restricted to rectangular
2xn boards. We also show that, when the number of colours is unbounded, the
problem remains NP-hard on such boards. This resolves a question of Clifford,
Jalsenius, Montanaro and Sach (2010)
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