Approximate counting CSP seen from the other side
Abstract
In this paper we study the complexity of counting Constraint Satisfaction Problems (CSPs) of the form #CSP(,-), in which the goal is, given a relational structure from a class of structures and an arbitrary structure , to find the number of homomorphisms from to . Flum and Grohe showed that #CSP(,-) is solvable in polynomial time if has bounded treewidth [FOCS'02]. Building on the work of Grohe [JACM'07] on decision CSPs, Dalmau and Jonsson then showed that, if is a recursively enumerable class of relational structures of bounded arity, then assuming FPT #W[1], there are no other cases of #CSP(,-) solvable exactly in polynomial time (or even fixed-parameter time) [TCS'04]. We show that, assuming FPT W[1] (under randomised parametrised reductions) and for satisfying certain general conditions, #CSP(,-) is not solvable even approximately for of unbounded treewidth; that is, there is no fixed parameter tractable (and thus also not fully polynomial) randomised approximation scheme for #CSP(,-). In particular, our condition generalises the case when is closed under taking minors.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1907.07922,
title = {Approximate counting CSP seen from the other side},
author = {Andrei A. Bulatov and Stanislav Zivny},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1907.07922},
year = {2020}
}
Comments
Full version of an MFCS'19 paper