Related papers: Broder's Chain Is Not Rapidly Mixing
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…
The switch chain is a well-known Markov chain for sampling directed graphs with a given degree sequence. While not ergodic in general, we show that it is ergodic for regular degree sequences. We then prove that the switch chain is rapidly…
We study a simple Markov chain, the switch chain, on the set of all perfect matchings in a bipartite graph. This Markov chain was proposed by Diaconis, Graham and Holmes as a possible approach to a sampling problem arising in Statistics. We…
Mixing of finite time-homogeneous Markov chains is well understood nowadays, with a rich set of techniques to estimate their mixing time. In this paper, we study the mixing time of random walks in dynamic random environments. To that end,…
We present the first algorithm for generating random variates exactly uniformly from the set of perfect matchings of a bipartite graph with a polynomial expected running time over a nontrivial set of graphs. Previous Markov chain approaches…
Since 1997 a considerable effort has been spent to study the mixing time of switch Markov chains on the realizations of graphic degree sequences of simple graphs. Several results were proved on rapidly mixing Markov chains on unconstrained,…
In this paper we consider a simple Markov chain for bipartite graphs with given degree sequence on $n$ vertices. We show that the mixing time of this Markov chain is bounded above by a polynomial in $n$ in case of {\em semi-regular} degree…
We show that the Jerrum-Sinclair Markov chain on matchings mixes in time $\widetilde{O}(\Delta^2 m)$ on any graph with $n$ vertices, $m$ edges, and maximum degree $\Delta$, for any constant edge weight $\lambda>0$. For general graphs with…
Bounding chains are a technique that offers three benefits to Markov chain practitioners: a theoretical bound on the mixing time of the chain under restricted conditions, experimental bounds on the mixing time of the chain that are provably…
We provide a general framework for computing upper bounds on mixing times of finite Markov chains when its minimal ideal is left zero. Our analysis is based on combining results by Brown and Diaconis with our previous work on stationary…
We provide new upper bounds for mixing times of general finite Markov chains. We use these bounds to show that the total variation mixing time is robust under rough isometry for bounded degree graphs that are roughly isometric to trees.
In a series of recent works, Boyd, Diaconis, and their co-authors have introduced a semidefinite programming approach for computing the fastest mixing Markov chain on a graph of allowed transitions, given a target stationary distribution.…
The approximate uniform sampling of graph realizations with a given degree sequence is an everyday task in several social science, computer science, engineering etc. projects. One approach is using Markov chains. The best available current…
We show that efficient approximate sampling algorithms, combined with a slow exponential time oracle for computing its output distribution, can be combined into constructing efficient perfect samplers, which sample exactly from a target…
Lifted Markov chains are Markov chains on graphs with added local "memory" and can be used to mix towards a target distribution faster than their memoryless counterparts. Upper and lower bounds on the achievable performance have been…
We give a new rapid mixing result for a natural random walk on the independent sets of a graph $G$. We show that when $G$ has bounded treewidth, this random walk -- known as the Glauber dynamics for the hardcore model -- mixes rapidly for…
The switch Markov chain has been extensively studied as the most natural Markov Chain Monte Carlo approach for sampling graphs with prescribed degree sequences. We use comparison arguments with other, less natural but simpler to analyze,…
We prove an upper bound on the total variation mixing time of a finite Markov chain in terms of the absolute spectral gap and the number of elements in the state space. Unlike results requiring reversibility or irreducibility, this bound is…
The problem of efficiently sampling from a set of(undirected) graphs with a given degree sequence has many applications. One approach to this problem uses a simple Markov chain, which we call the switch chain, to perform the sampling. The…
We show that the ratio of the number of near perfect matchings to the number of perfect matchings in $d$-regular strong expander (non-bipartite) graphs, with $2n$ vertices, is a polynomial in $n$, thus the Jerrum and Sinclair Markov chain…