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We consider Glauber dynamics (starting from an extremal configuration) in a monotone spin system, and show that interjecting extra updates cannot increase the expected Hamming distance or the total variation distance to the stationary…
Since 1997 a considerable effort has been spent to study the mixing time of switch Markov chains on the realizations of graphic degree sequences of simple graphs. Several results were proved on rapidly mixing Markov chains on unconstrained,…
We present improved bounds for randomly sampling $k$-colorings of graphs with maximum degree $\Delta$; our results hold without any further assumptions on the graph. The Glauber dynamics is a simple single-site update Markov chain. Jerrum…
We consider tilings of $\mathbb{Z}^2$ by two types of squares. We are interested in the rate of convergence to the stationarity of a natural Markov chain defined for square tilings. The rate of convergence can be represented by the mixing…
\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 give a new method for analysing the mixing time of a Markov chain using path coupling with stopping times. We apply this approach to two hypergraph problems. We show that the Glauber dynamics for independent sets in a hypergraph mixes…
The random-cluster model has been widely studied as a unifying framework for random graphs, spin systems and electrical networks, but its dynamics have so far largely resisted analysis. In this paper we analyze the Glauber dynamics of the…
We show polylogarithmic mixing time bounds for the alternating-scan sampler for positively weighted restricted Boltzmann machines. This is done via analysing the same chain and the Glauber dynamics for ferromagnetic two-spin systems, where…
We prove an optimal $\Omega(n^{-1})$ lower bound on the spectral gap of Glauber dynamics for anti-ferromagnetic two-spin systems with $n$ vertices in the tree uniqueness regime. This spectral gap holds for all, including unbounded, maximum…
A $k$-height on a graph $G=(V, E)$ is an assignment $V\to\{0, \ldots, k\}$ such that the value on ajacent vertices differs by at most $1$. We study the Markov chain on $k$-heights that in each step selects a vertex at random, and, if…
We prove two results on the mixing times of Markov chains for two-spin systems. First, we show that the Glauber dynamics mixes in polynomial time for the Gibbs distributions of antiferromagnetic two-spin systems at the critical threshold of…
Let $X$ be a finite set and let $G$ be a finite group acting on $X$. The group action splits $X$ into disjoint orbits. The Burnside process is a Markov chain on $X$ which has a uniform stationary distribution when the chain is lumped to…
We consider stochastic spin-flip dynamics for: (i) monotone discrete surfaces in Z^3 with planar boundary height and (ii) the one-dimensional discrete Solid-on-Solid (SOS) model confined to a box. In both cases we show almost optimal bounds…
We show that the existence of a "good"' coupling w.r.t. Hamming distance for any local Markov chain on a discrete product space implies rapid mixing of the Glauber dynamics in a blackbox fashion. More specifically, we only require the…
We study the mixing time of Glauber dynamics on monotone systems. For monotone systems satisfying the entropic independence condition, we prove a new mixing time comparison result for Glauber dynamics. For concrete applications, we obtain…
Finding a ground state of a given Hamiltonian of an Ising model on a graph $G=(V,E)$ is an important but hard problem. The standard approach for this kind of problem is the application of algorithms that rely on single-spin-flip Markov…
Sampling graph colorings via local Markov chains is a central problem in approximate counting and Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC). We address the problem of sampling a random $k$-coloring of a graph with maximum degree $\Delta$. The…
We analyze the general biased adjacent transposition shuffle process, which is a well-studied Markov chain on the symmetric group $S_n$. In each step, an adjacent pair of elements $i$ and $j$ are chosen, and then $i$ is placed ahead of $j$…
We consider a directed version of the classical Stochastic Block Model with $m\ge 2$ communities and a parameter $\alpha$ controlling the inter-community connectivity. We show that, depending on the scaling of $\alpha$, the mixing time of…
We consider the problem of computing a maximal matching with a distributed algorithm in the presence of batch-dynamic changes to the graph topology. We assume that a graph of $n$ nodes is vertex-partitioned among $k$ players that…