Related papers: Optimal Mixing of Glauber Dynamics: Entropy Factor…

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 consider the problem of sampling a proper $k$-coloring of a graph of maximal degree $\Delta$ uniformly at random. We describe a new Markov chain for sampling colorings, and show that it mixes rapidly on graphs of bounded treewidth if…

Maximal independent set (MIS), maximal matching (MM), and $(\Delta+1)$-coloring in graphs of maximum degree $\Delta$ are among the most prominent algorithmic graph theory problems. They are all solvable by a simple linear-time greedy…

We study the multi-component Ising model, which is also known as the block Ising model. In this model, the particles are partitioned into a fixed number of groups with a fixed proportion, and the interaction strength is determined by the…

The $\Delta$-vertex coloring problem has become one of the prototypical problems for understanding the complexity of local distributed graph problems on constant-degree graphs. The major open problem is whether the problem can be solved…

For spin systems, such as the $q$-colorings and independent-set models, approximating the partition function in the so-called non-uniqueness region, where the model exhibits long-range correlations, is typically computationally hard for…

We present a simple randomized algorithm that can efficiently maintain a $(\Delta+1)$ coloring as the graph undergoes edge insertion and deletion updates, where $\Delta$ denotes an upper bound on the maximum degree. A key advantage is the…

Glauber dynamics is a powerful tool to generate randomized, approximate solutions to combinatorially difficult problems. It has been used to analyze and design distributed CSMA (Carrier Sense Multiple Access) scheduling algorithms for…

In a very recent breakthrough, Behnezhad and Ghafari [FOCS'24] developed a novel fully dynamic randomized algorithm for maintaining a $(1-\epsilon)$-approximation of maximum matching with amortized update time potentially much better than…

For a graph $G$, let $\nu_s(G)$ be the induced matching number of $G$. We prove the sharp bound $\nu_s(G)\geq \frac{n(G)}{9}$ for every graph $G$ of maximum degree at most $4$ and without isolated vertices that does not contain a certain…

This paper studies the fundamental problem of graph coloring in fully dynamic graphs. Since the problem of computing an optimal coloring, or even approximating it to within $n^{1-\epsilon}$ for any $\epsilon > 0$, is NP-hard in static…

The problem of sampling from the stationary distribution of a Markov chain finds widespread applications in a variety of fields. The time required for a Markov chain to converge to its stationary distribution is known as the classical…

We consider spin systems with nearest-neighbor interactions on an $n$-vertex $d$-dimensional cube of the integer lattice graph $\mathbb{Z}^d$. We study the effects that exponential decay with distance of spin correlations, specifically the…

We consider graph coloring and related problems in the distributed message-passing model. {Locally-iterative algorithms} are especially important in this setting. These are algorithms in which each vertex decides about its next color only…

Probabilistic zero-forcing is a coloring process on a graph. In this process, an initial set of vertices is colored blue, and the remaining vertices are colored white. At each time step, blue vertices have a non-zero probability of forcing…

Let $\epsilon \in (0, 1)$ and $n, \Delta \in \mathbb N$ be such that $\Delta = \Omega\left(\max\left\{\frac{\log n}{\epsilon},\, \left(\frac{1}{\epsilon}\log \frac{1}{\epsilon}\right)^2\right\}\right)$. Given an $n$-vertex $m$-edge simple…

We consider stochastic optimization problems where data is drawn from a Markov chain. Existing methods for this setting crucially rely on knowing the mixing time of the chain, which in real-world applications is usually unknown. We propose…

Strong spatial mixing (SSM) is an important quantitative notion of correlation decay for Gibbs distributions arising in statistical physics, probability theory, and theoretical computer science. A longstanding conjecture is that the uniform…

We study the Glauber dynamics for the random cluster (FK) model on the torus $(\mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z})^2$ with parameters $(p,q)$, for $q \in (1,4]$ and $p$ the critical point $p_c$. The dynamics is believed to undergo a critical slowdown,…

Graph coloring is one of the central problems in distributed graph algorithms. Much of the research on this topic has focused on coloring with $\Delta+1$ colors, where $\Delta$ denotes the maximum degree. Using $\Delta+1$ colors may be…