Strong spatial mixing for colorings on trees and its algorithmic applications

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Main Authors: Chen, Zongchen, Liu, Kuikui, Mani, Nitya, Moitra, Ankur
Format: Preprint
Published: 2023
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author Chen, Zongchen
Liu, Kuikui
Mani, Nitya
Moitra, Ankur
author_facet Chen, Zongchen
Liu, Kuikui
Mani, Nitya
Moitra, Ankur
contents Strong spatial mixing (SSM) is an important quantitative notion of correlation decay for Gibbs distributions arising in statistical physics, probability theory, and theoretical computer science. A longstanding conjecture is that the uniform distribution on proper $q$-colorings on a $Δ$-regular tree exhibits SSM whenever $q \ge Δ+1$. Moreover, it is widely believed that as long as SSM holds on bounded-degree trees with $q$ colors, one would obtain an efficient sampler for $q$-colorings on all bounded-degree graphs via simple Markov chain algorithms. It is surprising that such a basic question is still open, even on trees, but then again it also highlights how much we still have to learn about random colorings. In this paper, we show the following: (1) For any $Δ\ge 3$, SSM holds for random $q$-colorings on trees of maximum degree $Δ$ whenever $q \ge Δ+ 3$. Thus we almost fully resolve the aforementioned conjecture. Our result substantially improves upon the previously best bound which requires $q \ge 1.59Δ+γ^*$ for an absolute constant $γ^* > 0$. (2) For any $Δ\ge 3$ and girth $g = Ω_Δ(1)$, we establish optimal mixing of the Glauber dynamics for $q$-colorings on graphs of maximum degree $Δ$ and girth $g$ whenever $q \ge Δ+3$. Our approach is based on a new general reduction from spectral independence on large-girth graphs to SSM on trees that is of independent interest. Using the same techniques, we also prove near-optimal bounds on weak spatial mixing (WSM), a closely-related notion to SSM, for the antiferromagnetic Potts model on trees.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2304_01954
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Strong spatial mixing for colorings on trees and its algorithmic applications
Chen, Zongchen
Liu, Kuikui
Mani, Nitya
Moitra, Ankur
Data Structures and Algorithms
Discrete Mathematics
Combinatorics
Probability
Strong spatial mixing (SSM) is an important quantitative notion of correlation decay for Gibbs distributions arising in statistical physics, probability theory, and theoretical computer science. A longstanding conjecture is that the uniform distribution on proper $q$-colorings on a $Δ$-regular tree exhibits SSM whenever $q \ge Δ+1$. Moreover, it is widely believed that as long as SSM holds on bounded-degree trees with $q$ colors, one would obtain an efficient sampler for $q$-colorings on all bounded-degree graphs via simple Markov chain algorithms. It is surprising that such a basic question is still open, even on trees, but then again it also highlights how much we still have to learn about random colorings. In this paper, we show the following: (1) For any $Δ\ge 3$, SSM holds for random $q$-colorings on trees of maximum degree $Δ$ whenever $q \ge Δ+ 3$. Thus we almost fully resolve the aforementioned conjecture. Our result substantially improves upon the previously best bound which requires $q \ge 1.59Δ+γ^*$ for an absolute constant $γ^* > 0$. (2) For any $Δ\ge 3$ and girth $g = Ω_Δ(1)$, we establish optimal mixing of the Glauber dynamics for $q$-colorings on graphs of maximum degree $Δ$ and girth $g$ whenever $q \ge Δ+3$. Our approach is based on a new general reduction from spectral independence on large-girth graphs to SSM on trees that is of independent interest. Using the same techniques, we also prove near-optimal bounds on weak spatial mixing (WSM), a closely-related notion to SSM, for the antiferromagnetic Potts model on trees.
title Strong spatial mixing for colorings on trees and its algorithmic applications
topic Data Structures and Algorithms
Discrete Mathematics
Combinatorics
Probability
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.01954