Homecs.DSarXiv:2605.29566

Sampling Directed Eulerian Tours in $\widetilde O(m^{3/2})$ Time

cs.DSmath.PR2026-05v1license

Abstract

We give a randomized algorithm that samples a nearly uniform Eulerian tour of a directed Eulerian multigraph with mm arcs in O~(m3/2)\widetilde O(m^{3/2}) time. The guarantee is worst-case, applies to arbitrary directed Eulerian multigraphs, and breaks the mnmn-type arborescence-sampling barrier on sparse graphs. The core case is a 22-in/22-out graph. We introduce a new local Markov chain, the flip--repair walk: one step locally splits a tour into two circuits and then chooses uniformly among the local flips that repair the state to one tour. We prove that this walk mixes in nearly linear many steps and implement the walk using a dynamic chord data structure. A pointwise degree-reduction wrapper extends the sampler from this degree-two core to arbitrary degrees while preserving the O~(m3/2)\widetilde O(m^{3/2}) total running time. The high-level algorithmic plan, the switching-network reduction, and the dynamic data-structure argument were devised by the author. The author conjectured the mixing theorem underlying the analysis, and GPT 5.5 Pro Extended produced its linear-algebra proof. Codex assisted with manuscript assembly and typesetting.

Comments: 42 pages, 6 figures

Cite

@article{arxiv.2605.29566,
  title  = {Sampling Directed Eulerian Tours in $\widetilde O(m^{3/2})$ Time},
  author = {Nima Anari},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2605.29566},
  year   = {2026}
}