6,571 research outputs found
Counting Triangulations and other Crossing-Free Structures Approximately
We consider the problem of counting straight-edge triangulations of a given
set of points in the plane. Until very recently it was not known
whether the exact number of triangulations of can be computed
asymptotically faster than by enumerating all triangulations. We now know that
the number of triangulations of can be computed in time,
which is less than the lower bound of on the number of
triangulations of any point set. In this paper we address the question of
whether one can approximately count triangulations in sub-exponential time. We
present an algorithm with sub-exponential running time and sub-exponential
approximation ratio, that is, denoting by the output of our
algorithm, and by the exact number of triangulations of , for some
positive constant , we prove that . This is the first algorithm that in sub-exponential time computes a
-approximation of the base of the number of triangulations, more
precisely, . Our algorithm can be
adapted to approximately count other crossing-free structures on , keeping
the quality of approximation and running time intact. In this paper we show how
to do this for matchings and spanning trees.Comment: 19 pages, 2 figures. A preliminary version appeared at CCCG 201
The number of matchings in random graphs
We study matchings on sparse random graphs by means of the cavity method. We
first show how the method reproduces several known results about maximum and
perfect matchings in regular and Erdos-Renyi random graphs. Our main new result
is the computation of the entropy, i.e. the leading order of the logarithm of
the number of solutions, of matchings with a given size. We derive both an
algorithm to compute this entropy for an arbitrary graph with a girth that
diverges in the large size limit, and an analytic result for the entropy in
regular and Erdos-Renyi random graph ensembles.Comment: 17 pages, 6 figures, to be published in Journal of Statistical
Mechanic
Space Saving by Dynamic Algebraization
Dynamic programming is widely used for exact computations based on tree
decompositions of graphs. However, the space complexity is usually exponential
in the treewidth. We study the problem of designing efficient dynamic
programming algorithm based on tree decompositions in polynomial space. We show
how to construct a tree decomposition and extend the algebraic techniques of
Lokshtanov and Nederlof such that the dynamic programming algorithm runs in
time , where is the maximum number of vertices in the union of
bags on the root to leaf paths on a given tree decomposition, which is a
parameter closely related to the tree-depth of a graph. We apply our algorithm
to the problem of counting perfect matchings on grids and show that it
outperforms other polynomial-space solutions. We also apply the algorithm to
other set covering and partitioning problems.Comment: 14 pages, 1 figur
Exact Covers via Determinants
Given a k-uniform hypergraph on n vertices, partitioned in k equal parts such
that every hyperedge includes one vertex from each part, the k-dimensional
matching problem asks whether there is a disjoint collection of the hyperedges
which covers all vertices. We show it can be solved by a randomized polynomial
space algorithm in time O*(2^(n(k-2)/k)). The O*() notation hides factors
polynomial in n and k.
When we drop the partition constraint and permit arbitrary hyperedges of
cardinality k, we obtain the exact cover by k-sets problem. We show it can be
solved by a randomized polynomial space algorithm in time O*(c_k^n), where
c_3=1.496, c_4=1.642, c_5=1.721, and provide a general bound for larger k.
Both results substantially improve on the previous best algorithms for these
problems, especially for small k, and follow from the new observation that
Lovasz' perfect matching detection via determinants (1979) admits an embedding
in the recently proposed inclusion-exclusion counting scheme for set covers,
despite its inability to count the perfect matchings
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
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