FPTAS for Hardcore and Ising Models on Hypergraphs

Hardcore and Ising models are two most important families of two state spin systems in statistic physics. Partition function of spin systems is the center concept in statistic physics which connects microscopic particles and their interactions with their macroscopic and statistical properties of materials such as energy, entropy, ferromagnetism, etc. If each local interaction of the system involves only two particles, the system can be described by a graph. In this case, fully polynomial-time approximation scheme (FPTAS) for computing the partition function of both hardcore and anti-ferromagnetic Ising model was designed up to the uniqueness condition of the system. These result are the best possible since approximately computing the partition function beyond this threshold is NP-hard. In this paper, we generalize these results to general physics systems, where each local interaction may involves multiple particles. Such systems are described by hypergraphs. For hardcore model, we also provide FPTAS up to the uniqueness condition, and for anti-ferromagnetic Ising model, we obtain FPTAS where a slightly stronger condition holds

Approximate Counting via Correlation Decay on Planar Graphs

We show for a broad class of counting problems, correlation decay (strong spatial mixing) implies FPTAS on planar graphs. The framework for the counting problems considered by us is the Holant problems with arbitrary constant-size domain and symmetric constraint functions. We define a notion of regularity on the constraint functions, which covers a wide range of natural and important counting problems, including all multi-state spin systems, counting graph homomorphisms, counting weighted matchings or perfect matchings, the subgraphs world problem transformed from the ferromagnetic Ising model, and all counting CSPs and Holant problems with symmetric constraint functions of constant arity. The core of our algorithm is a fixed-parameter tractable algorithm which computes the exact values of the Holant problems with regular constraint functions on graphs of bounded treewidth. By utilizing the locally tree-like property of apex-minor-free families of graphs, the parameterized exact algorithm implies an FPTAS for the Holant problem on these graph families whenever the Gibbs measure defined by the problem exhibits strong spatial mixing. We further extend the recursive coupling technique to Holant problems and establish strong spatial mixing for the ferromagnetic Potts model and the subgraphs world problem. As consequences, we have new deterministic approximation algorithms on planar graphs and all apex-minor-free graphs for several counting problems

Sampling in Potts Model on Sparse Random Graphs

We study the problem of sampling almost uniform proper q-colorings in sparse Erdos-Renyi random graphs G(n,d/n), a research initiated by Dyer, Flaxman, Frieze and Vigoda [Dyer et al., RANDOM STRUCT ALGOR, 2006]. We obtain a fully polynomial time almost uniform sampler (FPAUS) for the problem provided q>3d+4, improving the current best bound q>5.5d [Efthymiou, SODA, 2014]. Our sampling algorithm works for more generalized models and broader family of sparse graphs. It is an efficient sampler (in the same sense of FPAUS) for anti-ferromagnetic Potts model with activity 03(1-b)d+4. We further identify a family of sparse graphs to which all these results can be extended. This family of graphs is characterized by the notion of contraction function, which is a new measure of the average degree in graphs