Related papers: Metastable Mixing of Markov Chains: Efficiently Sa…
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.…
Exponential random graph models have become increasingly important in the study of modern networks ranging from social networks, economic networks, to biological networks. They seek to capture a wide variety of common network tendencies…
Folklore belief holds that metastable wells in low-temperature statistical mechanics models exhibit high-temperature behavior. We make this rigorous in the exponential random graph model (ERGM) through the lens of concentration of measure.…
It is well known that Glauber dynamics on spin systems typically suffer exponential slowdowns at low temperatures. This is due to the emergence of multiple metastable phases in the state space, separated by narrow bottlenecks that are hard…
In this work we prove sufficient conditions for the Glauber dynamics corresponding to a sequence of (non-product) measures on finite product spaces to be rapidly mixing, i.e. that the mixing time with respect to the total variation distance…
When sampling a multi-modal distribution $\pi(x)$, $x\in \rr^d$, a Markov chain with local proposals is often slowly mixing; while a Small-World sampler \citep{guankrone} -- a Markov chain that uses a mixture of local and long-range…
The spectral gap $\gamma$ of a finite, ergodic, and reversible Markov chain is an important parameter measuring the asymptotic rate of convergence. In applications, the transition matrix $P$ may be unknown, yet one sample of the chain up to…
Given a graph $G$, the hard-core model defines a probability distribution over its independent sets, assigning to each set of size $k$ a probability of $\frac{\lambda^k}{Z}$, where $\lambda>0$ is a parameter known as the \emph{fugacity} and…
\emph{Sampling} constitutes an important tool in a variety of areas: from machine learning and combinatorial optimization to computational physics and biology. A central class of sampling algorithms is the \emph{Markov Chain Monte Carlo}…
We consider the performance of Glauber dynamics for the random cluster model with real parameter $q>1$ and temperature $\beta>0$. Recent work by Helmuth, Jenssen and Perkins detailed the ordered/disordered transition of the model on random…
Masked language models (MLMs) define local conditional distributions over tokens but do not, in general, correspond to any consistent joint distribution over sequences. This raises a fundamental question: what global distributional behavior…
Many natural Markov chains fail to mix to their stationary distribution in polynomially many steps. Often, this slow mixing is inevitable since it is computationally intractable to sample from their stationary measure. Nevertheless, Markov…
We consider the problem of generating uniformly random partitions of the vertex set of a graph such that every piece induces a connected subgraph. For the case where we want to have partitions with linearly many pieces of bounded size, we…
We investigate the metastable behavior of the long-range Ising model on random regular graphs under Glauber dynamics at low-temperature. We estimate the energy barrier and exit time from the metastable state using a nontrivial path-wise…
In this paper we propose a perfect simulation algorithm for the Exponential Random Graph Model, based on the Coupling From The Past method of Propp & Wilson (1996). We use a Glauber dynamics to construct the Markov Chain and we prove the…
We study the mixing properties of the single-site Markov chain known as the Glauber dynamics for sampling $k$-colorings of a sparse random graph $G(n,d/n)$ for constant $d$. The best known rapid mixing results for general graphs are in…
We analyze the mixing time of a natural local Markov chain (the Glauber dynamics) on configurations of the solid-on-solid model of statistical physics. This model has been proposed, among other things, as an idealization of the behavior of…
Sampling from Gibbs distribution is a central problem in computer science as well as in statistical physics. In this work we focus on the k-colouring model} and the hard-core model with fugacity \lambda when the underlying graph is an…
In this article, we derive a sharp mixing time estimate of the Glauber dynamics for the Curie-Weiss-Potts model in the low-temperature regime. In contrast to the high-temperature regime studied by Cuff et al. (J. Stat. Phys. 149: 432-477,…
Direct simulation of biomolecular dynamics in thermal equilibrium is challenging due to the metastable nature of conformation dynamics and the computational cost of molecular dynamics. Biased or enhanced sampling methods may improve the…