English

New Planar P-time Computable Six-Vertex Models and a Complete Complexity Classification

Computational Complexity 2021-04-14 v3

Abstract

We discover new P-time computable six-vertex models on planar graphs beyond Kasteleyn's algorithm for counting planar perfect matchings. We further prove that there are no more: Together, they exhaust all P-time computable six-vertex models on planar graphs, assuming #P is not P. This leads to the following exact complexity classification: For every parameter setting in C{\mathbb C} for the six-vertex model, the partition function is either (1) computable in P-time for every graph, or (2) #P-hard for general graphs but computable in P-time for planar graphs, or (3) #P-hard even for planar graphs. The classification has an explicit criterion. The new P-time cases in (2) provably cannot be subsumed by Kasteleyn's algorithm. They are obtained by a non-local connection to #CSP, defined in terms of a "loop space". This is the first substantive advance toward a planar Holant classification with not necessarily symmetric constraints. We introduce M\"obius transformation on C{\mathbb C} as a powerful new tool in hardness proofs for counting problems.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1704.01657,
  title  = {New Planar P-time Computable Six-Vertex Models and a Complete Complexity Classification},
  author = {Jin-Yi Cai and Zhiguo Fu and Shuai Shao},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1704.01657},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

61 pages, 16 figures. An extended abstract appears in SODA 2021

R2 v1 2026-06-22T19:09:13.641Z