5,124 research outputs found
Statistical mechanics of error exponents for error-correcting codes
Error exponents characterize the exponential decay, when increasing message
length, of the probability of error of many error-correcting codes. To tackle
the long standing problem of computing them exactly, we introduce a general,
thermodynamic, formalism that we illustrate with maximum-likelihood decoding of
low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes on the binary erasure channel (BEC) and
the binary symmetric channel (BSC). In this formalism, we apply the cavity
method for large deviations to derive expressions for both the average and
typical error exponents, which differ by the procedure used to select the codes
from specified ensembles. When decreasing the noise intensity, we find that two
phase transitions take place, at two different levels: a glass to ferromagnetic
transition in the space of codewords, and a paramagnetic to glass transition in
the space of codes.Comment: 32 pages, 13 figure
The complexity of approximately counting in 2-spin systems on -uniform bounded-degree hypergraphs
One of the most important recent developments in the complexity of
approximate counting is the classification of the complexity of approximating
the partition functions of antiferromagnetic 2-spin systems on bounded-degree
graphs. This classification is based on a beautiful connection to the so-called
uniqueness phase transition from statistical physics on the infinite
-regular tree. Our objective is to study the impact of this
classification on unweighted 2-spin models on -uniform hypergraphs. As has
already been indicated by Yin and Zhao, the connection between the uniqueness
phase transition and the complexity of approximate counting breaks down in the
hypergraph setting. Nevertheless, we show that for every non-trivial symmetric
-ary Boolean function there exists a degree bound so that for
all the following problem is NP-hard: given a
-uniform hypergraph with maximum degree at most , approximate the
partition function of the hypergraph 2-spin model associated with . It is
NP-hard to approximate this partition function even within an exponential
factor. By contrast, if is a trivial symmetric Boolean function (e.g., any
function that is excluded from our result), then the partition function of
the corresponding hypergraph 2-spin model can be computed exactly in polynomial
time
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