250 research outputs found
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
Metric Construction, Stopping Times and Path Coupling
In this paper we examine the importance of the choice of metric in path
coupling, and the relationship of this to \emph{stopping time analysis}. We
give strong evidence that stopping time analysis is no more powerful than
standard path coupling. In particular, we prove a stronger theorem for path
coupling with stopping times, using a metric which allows us to restrict
analysis to standard one-step path coupling. This approach provides insight for
the design of non-standard metrics giving improvements in the analysis of
specific problems.
We give illustrative applications to hypergraph independent sets and SAT
instances, hypergraph colourings and colourings of bipartite graphs.Comment: 21 pages, revised version includes statement and proof of general
stopping times theorem (section 2.2), and additonal remarks in section
Recoloring bounded treewidth graphs
Let be an integer. Two vertex -colorings of a graph are
\emph{adjacent} if they differ on exactly one vertex. A graph is
\emph{-mixing} if any proper -coloring can be transformed into any other
through a sequence of adjacent proper -colorings. Any graph is
-mixing, where is the treewidth of the graph (Cereceda 2006). We
prove that the shortest sequence between any two -colorings is at most
quadratic, a problem left open in Bonamy et al. (2012).
Jerrum proved that any graph is -mixing if is at least the maximum
degree plus two. We improve Jerrum's bound using the grundy number, which is
the worst number of colors in a greedy coloring.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figure
Recoloring graphs via tree decompositions
Let be an integer. Two vertex -colorings of a graph are
\emph{adjacent} if they differ on exactly one vertex. A graph is
\emph{-mixing} if any proper -coloring can be transformed into any other
through a sequence of adjacent proper -colorings. Jerrum proved that any
graph is -mixing if is at least the maximum degree plus two. We first
improve Jerrum's bound using the grundy number, which is the worst number of
colors in a greedy coloring.
Any graph is -mixing, where is the treewidth of the graph
(Cereceda 2006). We prove that the shortest sequence between any two
-colorings is at most quadratic (which is optimal up to a constant
factor), a problem left open in Bonamy et al. (2012).
We also prove that given any two -colorings of a cograph (resp.
distance-hereditary graph) , we can find a linear (resp. quadratic) sequence
between them. In both cases, the bounds cannot be improved by more than a
constant factor for a fixed . The graph classes are also optimal in
some sense: one of the smallest interesting superclass of distance-hereditary
graphs corresponds to comparability graphs, for which no such property holds
(even when relaxing the constraint on the length of the sequence). As for
cographs, they are equivalently the graphs with no induced , and there
exist -free graphs that admit no sequence between two of their
-colorings.
All the proofs are constructivist and lead to polynomial-time recoloring
algorithmComment: 20 pages, 8 figures, partial results already presented in
http://arxiv.org/abs/1302.348
The Complexity of Approximately Counting Tree Homomorphisms
We study two computational problems, parameterised by a fixed tree H.
#HomsTo(H) is the problem of counting homomorphisms from an input graph G to H.
#WHomsTo(H) is the problem of counting weighted homomorphisms to H, given an
input graph G and a weight function for each vertex v of G. Even though H is a
tree, these problems turn out to be sufficiently rich to capture all of the
known approximation behaviour in #P. We give a complete trichotomy for
#WHomsTo(H). If H is a star then #WHomsTo(H) is in FP. If H is not a star but
it does not contain a certain induced subgraph J_3 then #WHomsTo(H) is
equivalent under approximation-preserving (AP) reductions to #BIS, the problem
of counting independent sets in a bipartite graph. This problem is complete for
the class #RHPi_1 under AP-reductions. Finally, if H contains an induced J_3
then #WHomsTo(H) is equivalent under AP-reductions to #SAT, the problem of
counting satisfying assignments to a CNF Boolean formula. Thus, #WHomsTo(H) is
complete for #P under AP-reductions. The results are similar for #HomsTo(H)
except that a rich structure emerges if H contains an induced J_3. We show that
there are trees H for which #HomsTo(H) is #SAT-equivalent (disproving a
plausible conjecture of Kelk). There is an interesting connection between these
homomorphism-counting problems and the problem of approximating the partition
function of the ferromagnetic Potts model. In particular, we show that for a
family of graphs J_q, parameterised by a positive integer q, the problem
#HomsTo(H) is AP-interreducible with the problem of approximating the partition
function of the q-state Potts model. It was not previously known that the Potts
model had a homomorphism-counting interpretation. We use this connection to
obtain some additional upper bounds for the approximation complexity of
#HomsTo(J_q)
Deterministic counting of graph colourings using sequences of subgraphs
In this paper we propose a deterministic algorithm for approximately counting
the -colourings of sparse random graphs . In particular, our
algorithm computes in polynomial time a approximation of
the logarithm of the number of -colourings of for with high probability over the graph instances.
Our algorithm is related to the algorithms of A. Bandyopadhyay et al. in SODA
'06, and A. Montanari et al. in SODA '06, i.e. it uses {\em spatial correlation
decay} to compute {\em deterministically} marginals of {\em Gibbs
distribution}. We develop a scheme whose accuracy depends on {\em
non-reconstruction} of the colourings of , rather than {\em
uniqueness} that are required in previous works. This leaves open the
possibility for our schema to be sufficiently accurate even for .
The set up for establishing correlation decay is as follows: Given
, we alter the graph structure in some specific region of
the graph by deleting edges between vertices of . Then we show that
the effect of this change on the marginals of Gibbs distribution, diminishes as
we move away from . Our approach is novel and suggests a new context
for the study of deterministic counting algorithms
Mixing graph colourings
This thesis investigates some problems related to graph colouring, or, more precisely, graph re-colouring. Informally, the basic question addressed can be phrased as follows. Suppose one is given a graph G whose vertices can be properly k-coloured, for some k ≥ 2. Is it possible to transform any k-colouring of G into any other by recolouring vertices of G one at a time, making sure a proper k-colouring of G is always maintained? If the answer is in the affirmative, G is said to be k-mixing. The related problem of deciding whether, given two k-colourings of G, it is possible to transform one into the other by recolouring vertices one at a time, always maintaining a proper k-colouring of G, is also considered.
These questions can be considered as having a bearing on certain mathematical and ‘real-world’ problems. In particular, being able to recolour any colouring of a given graph to any other colouring is a necessary pre-requisite for the method of sampling colourings known as Glauber dynamics. The results presented in this thesis may also find application in the context of frequency reassignment: given that the problem of assigning radio frequencies in a wireless communications network is often modelled as a graph colouring problem, the task of re-assigning frequencies in such a network can be thought of as a graph recolouring problem.
Throughout the thesis, the emphasis is on the algorithmic aspects and the computational complexity of the questions described above. In other words, how easily, in terms of computational resources used, can they be answered? Strong results are obtained for the k = 3 case of the first question, where a characterisation theorem for 3-mixing graphs is given. For the second question, a dichotomy theorem for the complexity of the problem is proved: the problem is solvable in polynomial time for k ≤ 3 and PSPACE-complete for k ≥ 4. In addition, the possible length of a shortest sequence of recolourings between two colourings is investigated, and an interesting connection between the tractability of the problem and its underlying structure is established. Some variants of the above problems are also explored
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