Related papers: A Counterexample to rapid mixing of the Ge-Stefank…
The Metropolis-Hastings method is often used to construct a Markov chain with a given $\pi$ as its stationary distribution. The method works even if $\pi$ is known only up to an intractable constant of proportionality. Polynomial time…
Counting the independent sets of a graph is a classical #P-complete problem, even in the bipartite case. We give an exponential-time approximation scheme for this problem which is faster than the best known algorithm for the exact problem.…
A time-dependent finite-state Markov chain that uses doubly stochastic transition matrices, is considered. Entropic quantities that describe the randomness of the probability vectors, and also the randomness of the discrete paths, are…
We consider local Markov chain Monte-Carlo algorithms for sampling from the weighted distribution of independent sets with activity $\l$, where the weight of an independent set $I$ is $\l^{|I|}$. A recent result has established that Gibbs…
Gibbs sampling is a Markov chain Monte Carlo technique commonly used for estimating marginal distributions. To speed up Gibbs sampling, there has recently been interest in parallelizing it by executing asynchronously. While empirical…
We show a strict hierarchy among various edge and vertex expansion properties of Markov chains. This gives easy proofs of a range of bounds, both classical and new, on chi-square distance, spectral gap and mixing time. The 2-gradient is…
Some microfluidic lab-on-chip devices contain modules whose function is to mix two fluids, called reactant and buffer, in desired proportions. In one of the technologies for fluid mixing the process can be represented by a directed acyclic…
We analyze the absolute spectral gap of Markov chains on graphs obtained from a cycle of $n$ vertices and perturbed only at approximately $n^{1/\rho}$ random locations with an appropriate, possibly sparse, interconnection structure.…
Graph randomisation is a crucial task in the analysis and synthesis of networks. It is typically implemented as an edge switching process (ESMC) repeatedly swapping the nodes of random edge pairs while maintaining the degrees involved.…
Mahlmann and Schindelhauer (2005) defined a Markov chain which they called $k$-Flipper, and showed that it is irreducible on the set of all connected regular graphs of a given degree (at least 3). We study the 1-Flipper chain, which we call…
Exponential random graphs are used extensively in the sociology literature. This model seeks to incorporate in random graphs the notion of reciprocity, that is, the larger than expected number of triangles and other small subgraphs.…
We survey existing techniques to bound the mixing time of Markov chains. The mixing time is related to a geometric parameter called conductance which is a measure of edge-expansion. Bounds on conductance are typically obtained by a…
In this paper, we prove intractability results about sampling from the set of partitions of a planar graph into connected components. Our proofs are motivated by a technique introduced by Jerrum, Valiant, and Vazirani. Moreover, we use…
We introduce a statistical mechanics formalism for the study of constrained graph evolution as a Markovian stochastic process, in analogy with that available for spin systems, deriving its basic properties and highlighting the role of the…
Product-form stationary distributions in Markov chains have been a foundational advance and driving force in our understanding of stochastic systems. In this paper, we introduce a new product-form relationship that we call "graph-based…
Decomposable graphs are known for their tedious and complicated Markov update steps. Instead of modelling them directly, this work introduces a class of tree-dependent bipartite graphs that span the projective space of decomposable graphs.…
We study probability measures induced by set functions with constraints. Such measures arise in a variety of real-world settings, where prior knowledge, resource limitations, or other pragmatic considerations impose constraints. We consider…
Graded posets frequently arise throughout combinatorics, where it is natural to try to count the number of elements of a fixed rank. These counting problems are often $\#\textbf{P}$-complete, so we consider approximation algorithms for…
The notion of augmenting graphs generalizes Berge's idea of augmenting chains, which was used by Edmonds in his celebrated solution of the maximum matching problem. This problem is a special case of the more general maximum independent set…
We propose Markov two-components processes (M2CP) as a probabilistic model of asynchronous systems based on the trace semantics for concurrency. Considering an asynchronous system distributed over two sites, we introduce concepts and tools…