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The Complexity of Partition Functions

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Automata, Languages and Programming (ICALP 2004)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 3142))

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Abstract

We give a complexity theoretic classification of the counting versions of so-called H-colouring problems for graphs H that may have multiple edges between the same pair of vertices. More generally, we study the problem of computing a weighted sum of homomorphisms to a weighted graph H.

The problem has two interesting alternative formulations: First, it is equivalent to computing the partition function of a spin system as studied in statistical physics. And second, it is equivalent to counting the solutions to a constraint satisfaction problem whose constraint language consists of two equivalence relations.

In a nutshell, our result says that the problem is in polynomial time if the adjacency matrix of H has row rank 1, and #P-complete otherwise.

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Bulatov, A., Grohe, M. (2004). The Complexity of Partition Functions. In: Díaz, J., Karhumäki, J., Lepistö, A., Sannella, D. (eds) Automata, Languages and Programming. ICALP 2004. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 3142. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-27836-8_27

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-27836-8_27

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-22849-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-27836-8

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