Related papers: Rapid Mixing on Random Regular Graphs beyond Uniqu…
The Swendsen-Wang dynamics is a popular algorithm for sampling from the Gibbs distribution for the ferromagnetic Ising model on a graph $G=(V,E)$. The dynamics is a "global" Markov chain which is conjectured to converge to equilibrium in…
We consider the dynamics of an extension of the influential Granovetter model of social behavior, where individuals are affected by their personal preferences and observation of the neighbors' behavior. Individuals are arranged in a network…
Since 1997 a considerable effort has been spent on the study of the swap (switch) Markov chains on graphic degree sequences. Several results were proved on rapidly mixing Markov chains on regular simple, on regular directed, on half-regular…
Understanding how turbulence enhances irreversible scalar mixing in density-stratified fluids is a central problem in geophysical fluid dynamics. While isotropic overturning regions are commonly the focus of mixing analyses, we here…
We consider unsupervised estimation of mixtures of discrete graphical models, where the class variable corresponding to the mixture components is hidden and each mixture component over the observed variables can have a potentially different…
In this survey paper, we describe and characterize an extension to the classical path coupling method applied statistical mechanical models, referred to as aggregate path coupling. In conjunction with large deviations estimates, we use this…
We introduce a general class of mean-field-like spin systems with random couplings that comprises both the Ising model on inhomogeneous dense random graphs and the randomly diluted Hopfield model. We are interested in quantitative estimates…
The SIS (susceptible-infected-susceptible) epidemic model on an arbitrary network, without making approximations, is a $2^n$-state Markov chain with a unique absorbing state (the all-healthy state). This makes analysis of the SIS model and,…
The random-cluster model is a unifying framework for studying random graphs, spin systems in physics and random spanning trees. The model is closely related to, though much more general than the classical Ising and Potts models, but its…
Hyperbolicity is a property of a graph that may be viewed as being a "soft" version of a tree, and recent empirical and theoretical work has suggested that many graphs arising in Internet and related data applications have hyperbolic…
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 analyze the properties of degree-preserving Markov chains based on elementary edge switchings in undirected and directed graphs. We give exact yet simple formulas for the mobility of a graph (the number of possible moves) in terms of its…
The main goal in distributed symmetry-breaking is to understand the locality of problems; i.e., the radius of the neighborhood that a node needs to explore in order to arrive at its part of a global solution. In this work, we study the…
We present a general approach to study the flooding time (a measure of how fast information spreads) in dynamic graphs (graphs whose topology changes with time according to a random process). We consider arbitrary converging Markovian…
We study a number of graph exploration problems in the following natural scenario: an algorithm starts exploring an undirected graph from some seed node; the algorithm, for an arbitrary node $v$ that it is aware of, can ask an oracle to…
The Glauber dynamics for the classical $2$-spin Curie-Weiss model on $N$ nodes with inverse temperature $\beta$ and zero external field is known to mix in time $\Theta(N\log N)$ for $\beta < \frac{1}{2}$, in time $\Theta(N^{3/2})$ at $\beta…
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…
A random walk is a basic stochastic process on graphs and a key primitive in the design of distributed algorithms. One of the most important features of random walks is that, under mild conditions, they converge to a stationary distribution…
We study the mixing time of random graphs in the $d$-dimensional toric unit cube $[0,1]^d$ generated by the geographical threshold graph (GTG) model, a generalization of random geometric graphs (RGG). In a GTG, nodes are distributed in a…
Gibbs sampling on factor graphs is a widely used inference technique, which often produces good empirical results. Theoretical guarantees for its performance are weak: even for tree structured graphs, the mixing time of Gibbs may be…