Message passing for the coloring problem: Gallager meets Alon and Kahale

Message passing algorithms are popular in many combinatorial optimization problems. For example, experimental results show that {\em survey propagation} (a certain message passing algorithm) is effective in finding proper $k$-colorings of random graphs in the near-threshold regime. In 1962 Gallager introduced the concept of Low Density Parity Check (LDPC) codes, and suggested a simple decoding algorithm based on message passing. In 1994 Alon and Kahale exhibited a coloring algorithm and proved its usefulness for finding a $k$-coloring of graphs drawn from a certain planted-solution distribution over $k$-colorable graphs. In this work we show an interpretation of Alon and Kahale's coloring algorithm in light of Gallager's decoding algorithm, thus showing a connection between the two problems - coloring and decoding. This also provides a rigorous evidence for the usefulness of the message passing paradigm for the graph coloring problem. Our techniques can be applied to several other combinatorial optimization problems and networking-related issues.Comment: 11 page

Local resilience and Hamiltonicity Maker-Breaker games in random-regular graphs

For an increasing monotone graph property \mP the \emph{local resilience} of a graph $G$ with respect to \mP is the minimal $r$ for which there exists of a subgraph $H\subseteq G$ with all degrees at most $r$ such that the removal of the edges of $H$ from $G$ creates a graph that does not possesses \mP. This notion, which was implicitly studied for some ad-hoc properties, was recently treated in a more systematic way in a paper by Sudakov and Vu. Most research conducted with respect to this distance notion focused on the Binomial random graph model \GNP and some families of pseudo-random graphs with respect to several graph properties such as containing a perfect matching and being Hamiltonian, to name a few. In this paper we continue to explore the local resilience notion, but turn our attention to random and pseudo-random \emph{regular} graphs of constant degree. We investigate the local resilience of the typical random $d$-regular graph with respect to edge and vertex connectivity, containing a perfect matching, and being Hamiltonian. In particular we prove that for every positive $\epsilon$ and large enough values of $d$ with high probability the local resilience of the random $d$-regular graph, \GND, with respect to being Hamiltonian is at least $(1-\epsilon)d/6$. We also prove that for the Binomial random graph model \GNP, for every positive $\epsilon>0$ and large enough values of $K$, if $p>\frac{K\ln n}{n}$ then with high probability the local resilience of \GNP with respect to being Hamiltonian is at least $(1-\epsilon)np/6$. Finally, we apply similar techniques to Positional Games and prove that if $d$ is large enough then with high probability a typical random $d$-regular graph $G$ is such that in the unbiased Maker-Breaker game played on the edges of $G$, Maker has a winning strategy to create a Hamilton cycle.Comment: 34 pages. 1 figur

Vertex Percolation on Expander Graphs

We say that a graph G = (V, E) on n vertices is a β-expander for some constant β> 0 if every U ⊆ V of cardinality |U | ≤ n 2 satisfies |NG(U) | ≥ β|U | where NG(U) denotes the neighborhood of U. In this work we explore the process of deleting vertices of a β-expander independently at random with probability n −α for some constant α> 0, and study the properties of the resulting graph. Our main result states that as n tends to infinity, the deletion process performed on a β-expander graph of bounded degree will result with high probability in a graph composed of a giant component containing n − o(n) vertices that is in itself an expander graph, and constant size components. We proceed by applying the main result to expander graphs with a positive spectral gap. In the particular case of (n, d, λ)-graphs, that are such expanders, we compute the values of α, under additional constraints on the graph, for which with high probability the resulting graph will stay connected, or will be composed of a giant component and isolated vertices. As a graph sampled from the uniform probability space of d-regular graphs with high probability is an expander and meets the additional constraints, this result strengthens a recent result due to Greenhill, Holt and Wormald about vertex percolation on random d-regular graphs. We conclude by showing that performing the above described deletion process on graphs that expand sub-linear sets by an unbounded expansion ratio, with high probability results in a connected expander graph.