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The computational equivalence between approximate counting and sampling is well established for polynomial-time algorithms. The most efficient general reduction from counting to sampling is achieved via simulated annealing, where the…
Simulated annealing is an effective and general means of optimization. It is in fact inspired by metallurgy, where the temperature of a material determines its behavior in thermodynamics. Likewise, in simulated annealing, the actions that…
A canonical approach to approximating the partition function of a Gibbs distribution via sampling is simulated annealing. This method has led to efficient reductions from counting to sampling, including: $\bullet$ classic non-adaptive…
Consider a family of distributions $\{\pi_{\beta}\}$ where $X\sim\pi_{\beta}$ means that $\mathbb{P}(X=x)=\exp(-\beta H(x))/Z(\beta)$. Here $Z(\beta)$ is the proper normalizing constant, equal to $\sum_x\exp(-\beta H(x))$. Then…
Population annealing is a variant of the simulated annealing algorithm that improves the quality of the thermalization process in systems with rough free-energy landscapes by introducing a resampling process. We consider the diluted…
We study the computational complexity of approximately computing the partition function of a spin system. Techniques based on standard counting-to-sampling reductions yield $\tilde{O}(n^2)$-time algorithms, where $n$ is the size of the…
We present an algorithm to approximate partition functions of 3-body classical Ising models on two-dimensional lattices of arbitrary genus, in the real-temperature regime. Even though our algorithm is purely classical, it is designed by…
As one of the most robust global optimization methods, simulated annealing has received considerable attention, with many variations that attempt to improve the cooling schedule. This paper introduces a variant of simulated annealing that…
We evaluate using programmable superconducting flux qubit D-Wave quantum annealers to approximate the partition function of Ising models. We propose the use of two distinct quantum annealer sampling methods: chains of Monte Carlo-like…
We study the problem of approximating the partition function of the ferromagnetic Ising model in graphs and hypergraphs. Our first result is a deterministic approximation scheme (an FPTAS) for the partition function in bounded degree graphs…
We study the complexity of approximating the partition function of dense Ising models in the critical regime. Recent work of Chen, Chen, Yin, and Zhang (FOCS 2025) established fast mixing at criticality, and even beyond criticality in a…
We study the problem of approximating the Ising model partition function with complex parameters on bounded degree graphs. We establish a deterministic polynomial-time approximation scheme for the partition function when the interactions…
Numerical evaluation of functional integrals usually involves a finite (L-slice) discretization of the imaginary-time axis. In the auxiliary-field method, the L-slice approximant to the density matrix can be evaluated as a function of…
The ferromagnetic Ising model is a model of a magnetic material and a central topic in statistical physics. It also plays a starring role in the algorithmic study of approximate counting: approximating the partition function of the…
We propose an approach for approximating the partition function which is based on two steps: (1) computing the partition function of a simplified model which is obtained by deleting model edges, and (2) rectifying the result by applying an…
We present a modified simulated annealing method with a dynamical choice of the cooling temperature. The latter is determined via a closed-loop control and is proven to yield exponential decay of the entropy of the particle system. The…
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…
Given a target function $U$ to minimize on a finite state space $\mathcal{X}$, a proposal chain with generator $Q$ and a cooling schedule $T(t)$ that depends on time $t$, in this paper we study two types of simulated annealing (SA)…
We consider the problem of approximating partition functions for Ising models. We make use of recent tools in combinatorial optimization: the Sherali-Adams and Lasserre convex programming hierarchies, in combination with variational methods…
We investigate zero-field Ising models on periodic approximants of planar quasiperiodic tilings by means of partition function zeros and high-temperature expansions. These are obtained by employing a determinant expression for the partition…