Related papers: Inapproximability of the independent set polynomia…
We study the computational complexity of approximately counting the number of independent sets of a graph with maximum degree Delta. More generally, for an input graph G=(V,E) and an activity lambda>0, we are interested in the quantity…
We prove that, unless P=NP, there is no polynomial-time algorithm to approximate within some multiplicative constant the average size of an independent set in graphs of maximum degree 6. This is a special case of a more general result for…
Given a locally finite graph $\Gamma$, an amenable subgroup $G$ of graph automorphisms acting freely and almost transitively on its vertices, and a $G$-invariant activity function $\lambda$, consider the free energy $f_G(\Gamma,\lambda)$ of…
We study the problem of approximating the value of the matching polynomial on graphs with edge parameter $\gamma$, where $\gamma$ takes arbitrary values in the complex plane. When $\gamma$ is a positive real, Jerrum and Sinclair showed that…
The independent set polynomial is important in many areas. For every integer $\Delta\geq 2$, the Shearer threshold is the value $\lambda^*(\Delta)=(\Delta-1)^{\Delta-1}/\Delta^{\Delta}$ . It is known that for $\lambda < -…
We study the complexity of approximating the partition function $Z_{\mathrm{Ising}}(G; \beta)$ of the Ising model in terms of the relation between the edge interaction $\beta$ and a parameter $\Delta$ which is an upper bound on the maximum…
In the Maximum Independent Set problem we are asked to find a set of pairwise nonadjacent vertices in a given graph with the maximum possible cardinality. In general graphs, this classical problem is known to be NP-hard and hard to…
It is shown in this note that approximating the number of independent sets in a $k$-uniform linear hypergraph with maximum degree at most $\Delta$ is NP-hard if $\Delta\geq 5\cdot 2^{k-1}+1$. This confirms that for the relevant sampling and…
We study the Independent Set (IS) problem in $H$-free graphs, i.e., graphs excluding some fixed graph $H$ as an induced subgraph. We prove several inapproximability results both for polynomial-time and parameterized algorithms.…
For each uniformity $k \geq 3$, we construct $k$-uniform linear hypergraphs $G$ with arbitrarily large maximum degree $\Delta$ whose independence polynomial $Z_G$ has a root $\lambda$ with $\lvert\lambda\rvert = O\left(\frac{\log…
An elimination tree of a connected graph $G$ is a rooted tree on the vertices of $G$ obtained by choosing a root $v$ and recursing on the connected components of $G-v$ to obtain the subtrees of $v$. The graph associahedron of $G$ is a…
It is known from the work of Shearer (1985) (and also Scott and Sokal (2005)) that the independence polynomial $Z_G(\lambda)$ of a graph $G$ of maximum degree at most $d+1$ does not vanish provided that $\vert{\lambda}\vert \leq…
$\delta$-Covering, for some covering range $\delta>0$, is a continuous facility location problem on undirected graphs where all edges have unit length. The facilities may be positioned on the vertices as well as on the interior of the…
We study the hard-core model defined on independent sets, where each independent set I in a graph G is weighted proportionally to $\lambda^{|I|}$, for a positive real parameter $\lambda$. For large $\lambda$, computing the partition…
We give an FPTAS for approximating the partition function of the hard-core model for bipartite graphs when there is sufficient imbalance in the degrees or fugacities between the sides $(L,R)$ of the bipartition. This includes, among others,…
The hard core model in statistical physics is a probability distribution on independent sets in a graph in which the weight of any independent set I is proportional to lambda^(|I|), where lambda > 0 is the vertex activity. We show that…
The complexity of graph homomorphisms has been a subject of intense study [11, 12, 4, 42, 21, 17, 6, 20]. The partition function $Z_{\mathbf A}(\cdot)$ of graph homomorphism is defined by a symmetric matrix $\mathbf A$ over $\mathbb C$. We…
Approximating the partition function of the ferromagnetic Ising model with general external fields is known to be #BIS-hard in the worst case, even for bounded-degree graphs, and it is widely believed that no polynomial-time approximation…
In the Maximum Independent Set of Objects problem, we are given an $n$-vertex planar graph $G$ and a family $\mathcal{D}$ of $N$ objects, where each object is a connected subgraph of $G$. The task is to find a subfamily $\mathcal{F}…
Recent inapproximability results of Sly (2010), together with an approximation algorithm presented by Weitz (2006) establish a beautiful picture for the computational complexity of approximating the partition function of the hard-core…