Ferromagnetic Potts Model: Refined #BIS-hardness and Related Results

Recent results establish for 2-spin antiferromagnetic systems that the computational complexity of approximating the partition function on graphs of maximum degree D undergoes a phase transition that coincides with the uniqueness phase transition on the infinite D-regular tree. For the ferromagnetic Potts model we investigate whether analogous hardness results hold. Goldberg and Jerrum showed that approximating the partition function of the ferromagnetic Potts model is at least as hard as approximating the number of independent sets in bipartite graphs (#BIS-hardness). We improve this hardness result by establishing it for bipartite graphs of maximum degree D. We first present a detailed picture for the phase diagram for the infinite D-regular tree, giving a refined picture of its first-order phase transition and establishing the critical temperature for the coexistence of the disordered and ordered phases. We then prove for all temperatures below this critical temperature that it is #BIS-hard to approximate the partition function on bipartite graphs of maximum degree D. As a corollary, it is #BIS-hard to approximate the number of k-colorings on bipartite graphs of maximum degree D when k <= D/(2 ln D). The #BIS-hardness result for the ferromagnetic Potts model uses random bipartite regular graphs as a gadget in the reduction. The analysis of these random graphs relies on recent connections between the maxima of the expectation of their partition function, attractive fixpoints of the associated tree recursions, and induced matrix norms. We extend these connections to random regular graphs for all ferromagnetic models and establish the Bethe prediction for every ferromagnetic spin system on random regular graphs. We also prove for the ferromagnetic Potts model that the Swendsen-Wang algorithm is torpidly mixing on random D-regular graphs at the critical temperature for large q.Comment: To appear in SIAM J. Computin

Phase transition for the mixing time of the Glauber dynamics for coloring regular trees

We prove that the mixing time of the Glauber dynamics for random k-colorings of the complete tree with branching factor b undergoes a phase transition at $k=b(1+o_b(1))/\ln{b}$. Our main result shows nearly sharp bounds on the mixing time of the dynamics on the complete tree with n vertices for $k=Cb/\ln{b}$ colors with constant C. For $C\geq1$ we prove the mixing time is $O(n^{1+o_b(1)}\ln{n})$. On the other side, for $C<1$ the mixing time experiences a slowing down; in particular, we prove it is $O(n^{1/C+o_b(1)}\ln{n})$ and $\Omega(n^{1/C-o_b(1)})$. The critical point C=1 is interesting since it coincides (at least up to first order) with the so-called reconstruction threshold which was recently established by Sly. The reconstruction threshold has been of considerable interest recently since it appears to have close connections to the efficiency of certain local algorithms, and this work was inspired by our attempt to understand these connections in this particular setting.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/11-AAP833 the Annals of Applied Probability (http://www.imstat.org/aap/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Phase Transition for Glauber Dynamics for Independent Sets on Regular Trees

We study the effect of boundary conditions on the relaxation time of the Glauber dynamics for the hard-core model on the tree. The hard-core model is defined on the set of independent sets weighted by a parameter $\lambda$, called the activity. The Glauber dynamics is the Markov chain that updates a randomly chosen vertex in each step. On the infinite tree with branching factor $b$, the hard-core model can be equivalently defined as a broadcasting process with a parameter $\omega$ which is the positive solution to $\lambda=\omega(1+\omega)^b$, and vertices are occupied with probability $\omega/(1+\omega)$ when their parent is unoccupied. This broadcasting process undergoes a phase transition between the so-called reconstruction and non-reconstruction regions at $\omega_r\approx \ln{b}/b$. Reconstruction has been of considerable interest recently since it appears to be intimately connected to the efficiency of local algorithms on locally tree-like graphs, such as sparse random graphs. In this paper we show that the relaxation time of the Glauber dynamics on regular $b$-ary trees $T_h$ of height $h$ and $n$ vertices, undergoes a phase transition around the reconstruction threshold. In particular, we construct a boundary condition for which the relaxation time slows down at the reconstruction threshold. More precisely, for any $\omega \le \ln{b}/b$, for $T_h$ with any boundary condition, the relaxation time is $\Omega(n)$ and $O(n^{1+o_b(1)})$. In contrast, above the reconstruction threshold we show that for every $\delta>0$, for $\omega=(1+\delta)\ln{b}/b$, the relaxation time on $T_h$ with any boundary condition is $O(n^{1+\delta + o_b(1)})$, and we construct a boundary condition where the relaxation time is $\Omega(n^{1+\delta/2 - o_b(1)})$

Ferromagnetic Potts Model: Refined #BIS-hardness and Related Results

Recent results establish for the hard-core model (and more generally for 2-spin antiferromagnetic systems) that the computational complexity of approximating the partition function on graphs of maximum degree D undergoes a phase transition that coincides with the uniqueness/non-uniqueness phase transition on the infinite D-regular tree. For the ferromagnetic Potts model we investigate whether analogous hardness results hold. Goldberg and Jerrum showed that approximating the partition function of the ferromagnetic Potts model is at least as hard as approximating the number of independent sets in bipartite graphs, so-called #BIS-hardness. We improve this hardness result by establishing it for bipartite graphs of maximum degree D. To this end, we first present a detailed picture for the phase diagram for the infinite D-regular tree, giving a refined picture of its first-order phase transition and establishing the critical temperature for the coexistence of the disordered and ordered phases. We then prove for all temperatures below this critical temperature (corresponding to the region where the ordered phase "dominates") that it is #BIS-hard to approximate the partition function on bipartite graphs of maximum degree D. The #BIS-hardness result uses random bipartite regular graphs as a gadget in the reduction. The analysis of these random graphs relies on recent results establishing connections between the maxima of the expectation of their partition function, attractive fixpoints of the associated tree recursions, and induced matrix norms. In this paper we extend these connections to random regular graphs for all ferromagnetic models. Using these connections, we establish the Bethe prediction for every ferromagnetic spin system on random regular graphs, which says roughly that the expectation of the log of the partition function Z is the same as the log of the expectation of Z. As a further consequence of our results, we prove for the ferromagnetic Potts model that the Swendsen-Wang algorithm is torpidly mixing (i.e., exponentially slow convergence to its stationary distribution) on random D-regular graphs at the critical temperature for sufficiently large q

Phase transitions in spin systems: uniqueness, reconstruction and mixing time

Spin systems are powerful mathematical models widely used and studied in Statistical Physics and Computer Science. This thesis focuses the study of spin systems on colorings and weighted independent sets (the hard-core model). In many spin systems, there exist phase transition phenomena: there is a threshold value of a parameter such that when the parameter is on one side of the threshold, the system exhibits the so-called spatial decay of correlation, i.e., the influence from a set of vertices to another set of vertices diminishes as the distance between the two sets grows; when the parameter is on the other side, long range correlations persist. The uniqueness problem and the reconstruction problem are two major threshold problems that are concerned with the decay of correlations in the Gibbs measure from different perspectives. In Computer Science, the study of spin systems mainly focused on finding an efficient algorithm that samples the configurations from a distribution that is very close to the Gibbs measure. Glauber dynamics is a typical Markov chain algorithm for performing sampling. In many systems, the convergence time of the Glauber dynamics also exhibits a threshold behavior: the speed of convergence experiences a dramatic change around the threshold of the parameter. The first two parts of this thesis focus on making connections between the phase transition of the convergence time of the dynamics and the phase transition of the reconstruction phenomenon in both colorings and the hard-core model on regular trees. A relatively sharp threshold is established for the change of the convergence time, which coincides with the reconstruction threshold. A general technique of upper bounding the conductance of the dynamics via analyzing the sensitivity of the reconstruction algorithm is proposed and proven to be very effective for lower bounding the convergence time of the dynamics. The third part of the thesis provides an innovative analytical method for establishing a strong version of the decay of correlation of the Gibbs distributions for many two spin systems on various classes of graphs. In particular, the method is applied to the hard-core model on the square lattice, a very important graph that is of great interest in both Statistical Physics and Computer Science. As a result, we significantly improve the lower bound of the uniqueness threshold on the square lattice and extend the range of parameter where the Glauber dynamics is rapidly mixing.PhDCommittee Chair: Vigoda, Eric; Committee Member: Randall, Dana; Committee Member: Stefankovic, Daniel; Committee Member: Tetali, Prasad; Committee Member: Vempala, Santos

Longest increasing subsequences in windows based on canonical antichain partition

AbstractGiven a sequence π1π2…πn, a longest increasing subsequence (LIS) in a window π〈l,r〉=πlπl+1…πr is a longest subsequence σ=πi1πi2…πiT such that l≤i1<i2<⋯<iT≤r and πi1<πi2<⋯<πiT. We consider the Lisw problem, which is to find the longest increasing subsequences in a sliding window of fixed-size w over a sequence. Formally, it is to find a LIS for every window in a set SFIX={π〈i+1,i+w〉∣0≤i≤n−w}∪{π〈1,i〉,π〈n−i,n〉∣i<w}. By maintaining a canonical antichain partition in windows, we present an optimal output-sensitive algorithm to solve this problem in O(output) time, where output is the sum of the lengths of the n+w−1 LISs in those windows of SFIX. In addition, we propose a more generalized problem called Lisset problem, which is to find a LIS for every window in a set SVAR containing variable-size windows. By applying our algorithm, we provide an efficient solution for the Lisset problem to output a LIS (or all the LISs) in every window which is better than the straightforward generalization of classical LIS algorithms. An upper bound of our algorithm on the Lisset problem is discussed

Improved Algorithms for Largest Cardinality 2-Interval Pattern Problem

The 2-Interval Pattern problem is to find the largest constrained pattern in a set of 2-intervals. The constrained pattern is a subset of the given 2-intervals such that any pair of them are R-comparable, where model R ⊆ { &lt;, ⊏, ()}. The problem stems from the study of general representation of RNA secondary structures. In this paper, we give three improved algorithms for different models. Firstly, an O(n log n + L) algorithm is proposed for the case R = { ()}, where L = O(dn) = O(n 2) is the total length of all 2-intervals (density d is the maximum number of 2-intervals over any point). This improves previous O(n 2 log n) algorithm. Secondly, we use dynamic programming techniques to obtain an O(n log n+dn) algorithm for the case R = { &lt;, ⊏}, which improves previous O(n 2) result. Finally, we present another O(n log n + L) algorithm for the case R = { ⊏, () } with disjoint support(interval ground set), which improves previous O(n 2 √ n) upper bound