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1. Metastability of the Potts Ferromagnet on Random Regular Graphs

   https://doi.org/10.1007/s00220-023-04644-6  

   Coja-Oghlan, Amin; Galanis, Andreas; Goldberg, Leslie Ann; Ravelomanana, Jean Bernoulli; Štefankovič, Daniel; Vigoda, Eric (February 2023, Communications in Mathematical Physics)

   Abstract We study the performance of Markov chains for theq-state ferromagnetic Potts model on random regular graphs. While the cases of the grid and the complete graph are by now well-understood, the case of random regular graphs has resisted a detailed analysis and, in fact, even analysing the properties of the Potts distribution has remained elusive. It is conjectured that the performance of Markov chains is dictated by metastability phenomena, i.e., the presence of “phases” (clusters) in the sample space where Markov chains with local update rules, such as the Glauber dynamics, are bound to take exponential time to escape, and therefore cause slow mixing. The phases that are believed to drive these metastability phenomena in the case of the Potts model emerge as local, rather than global, maxima of the so-called Bethe functional, and previous approaches of analysing these phases based on optimisation arguments fall short of the task. Our first contribution is to detail the emergence of the two relevant phases for theq-state Potts model on thed-regular random graph for all integers$$q,d\ge 3$$ $q,d\ge 3$, and establish that for an interval of temperatures, delineated by the uniqueness and a broadcasting threshold on thed-regular tree, the two phases coexist (as possible metastable states). The proofs are based on a conceptual connection between spatial properties and the structure of the Potts distribution on the random regular graph, rather than complicated moment calculations. This significantly refines earlier results by Helmuth, Jenssen, and Perkins who had established phase coexistence for a small interval around the so-called ordered-disordered threshold (via different arguments) that applied for largeqand$$d\ge 5$$ $d\ge 5$. Based on our new structural understanding of the model, our second contribution is to obtain metastability results for two classical Markov chains for the Potts model. We first complement recent fast mixing results for Glauber dynamics by Blanca and Gheissari below the uniqueness threshold, by showing an exponential lower bound on the mixing time above the uniqueness threshold. Then, we obtain tight results even for the non-local and more elaborate Swendsen–Wang chain, where we establish slow mixing/metastability for the whole interval of temperatures where the chain is conjectured to mix slowly on the random regular graph. The key is to bound the conductance of the chains using a random graph “planting” argument combined with delicate bounds on random-graph percolation. 

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2. Fast Sampling via Spectral Independence Beyond Bounded-Degree Graphs

   https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2022.21  

   Bezakova, Ivona; Galanis, Andreas; Goldberg, Leslie Ann; Stefankovic, Daniel (January 2022, International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP))

   Spectral independence is a recently-developed framework for obtaining sharp bounds on the convergence time of the classical Glauber dynamics. This new framework has yielded optimal O(n log n) sampling algorithms on bounded-degree graphs for a large class of problems throughout the so-called uniqueness regime, including, for example, the problems of sampling independent sets, matchings, and Ising-model configurations. Our main contribution is to relax the bounded-degree assumption that has so far been important in establishing and applying spectral independence. Previous methods for avoiding degree bounds rely on using L_p-norms to analyse contraction on graphs with bounded connective constant (Sinclair, Srivastava, Yin; FOCS’13). The non-linearity of L_p-norms is an obstacle to applying these results to bound spectral independence. Our solution is to capture the L_p-analysis recursively by amortising over the subtrees of the recurrence used to analyse contraction. Our method generalises previous analyses that applied only to bounded-degree graphs. As a main application of our techniques, we consider the random graph G(n, d/n), where the previously known algorithms run in time n^O(log d) or applied only to large d. We refine these algorithmic bounds significantly, and develop fast nearly linear algorithms based on Glauber dynamics that apply to all constant d, throughout the uniqueness regime. 

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3. Fast Sampling via Spectral Independence Beyond Bounded-Degree Graphs

   Bezáková, Ivona; Galanis, Andreas; Goldberg, Leslie Ann; Štefankovič, Daniel (June 2022, ICALP 2022)

   Spectral independence is a recently-developed framework for obtaining sharp bounds on the convergence time of the classical Glauber dynamics. This new framework has yielded optimal O(n log n) sampling algorithms on bounded-degree graphs for a large class of problems throughout the so-called uniqueness regime, including, for example, the problems of sampling independent sets, matchings, and Ising-model configurations. Our main contribution is to relax the bounded-degree assumption that has so far been important in establishing and applying spectral independence. Previous methods for avoiding degree bounds rely on using L^p-norms to analyse contraction on graphs with bounded connective constant (Sinclair, Srivastava, Yin; FOCS'13). The non-linearity of L^p-norms is an obstacle to applying these results to bound spectral independence. Our solution is to capture the L^p-analysis recursively by amortising over the subtrees of the recurrence used to analyse contraction. Our method generalises previous analyses that applied only to bounded-degree graphs. As a main application of our techniques, we consider the random graph G(n,d/n), where the previously known algorithms run in time n^O(log d) or applied only to large d. We refine these algorithmic bounds significantly, and develop fast nearly linear algorithms based on Glauber dynamics that apply to all constant d, throughout the uniqueness regime. 

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4. Fast algorithms at low temperatures via Markov chains†

   https://doi.org/10.1002/rsa.20968  

   Chen, Zongchen; Galanis, Andreas; Goldberg, Leslie A.; Perkins, Will; Stewart, James; Vigoda, Eric (October 2020, Random Structures & Algorithms)

   Efficient algorithms for approximate counting and sampling in spin systems typically apply in the so‐called high‐temperature regime, where the interaction between neighboring spins is “weak.” Instead, recent work of Jenssen, Keevash, and Perkins yields polynomial‐time algorithms in the low‐temperature regime on bounded‐degree (bipartite) expander graphs using polymer models and the cluster expansion. In order to speed up these algorithms (so the exponent in the run time does not depend on the degree bound) we present a Markov chain for polymer models and show that it is rapidly mixing under exponential decay of polymer weights. This yields, for example, an‐time sampling algorithm for the low‐temperature ferromagnetic Potts model on bounded‐degree expander graphs. Combining our results for the hard‐core and Potts models with Markov chain comparison tools, we obtain polynomial mixing time for Glauber dynamics restricted to appropriate portions of the state space. 

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5. On Mixing of Markov Chains: Coupling, Spectral Independence, and Entropy Factorization.

   Antonio Blanca, Pietro Caputo (January 2022, SODA 2022)

   For general spin systems, we prove that a contractive coupling for an arbitrary local Markov chain implies optimal bounds on the mixing time and the modified log-Sobolev constant for a large class of Markov chains including the Glauber dynamics, arbitrary heat-bath block dynamics, and the Swendsen-Wang dynamics. This reveals a novel connection between probabilistic techniques for bounding the convergence to stationarity and analytic tools for analyzing the decay of relative entropy. As a corollary of our general results, we obtain O(n log n) mixing time and Ω(1/n) modified log-Sobolev constant of the Glauber dynamics for sampling random q-colorings of an n-vertex graph with constant maximum degree Δ when q > (11/6–∊0)Δ for some fixed ∊0 > 0. We also obtain O(log n) mixing time and Ω(1) modified log-Sobolev constant of the Swendsen-Wang dynamics for the ferromagnetic Ising model on an n-vertex graph of constant maximum degree when the parameters of the system lie in the tree uniqueness region. At the heart of our results are new techniques for establishing spectral independence of the spin system and block factorization of the relative entropy. On one hand we prove that a contractive coupling of any local Markov chain implies spectral independence of the Gibbs distribution. On the other hand we show that spectral independence implies factorization of entropy for arbitrary blocks, establishing optimal bounds on the modified log-Sobolev constant of the corresponding block dynamics. 

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