Fast mixing for independent sets, colorings and other models on trees,” preprint.pdfVIP

Fast mixing for independent sets, colorings and other models on trees† Fabio Martinelli‡ Alistair Sinclair§ Dror Weitz ¶ November 29, 2004 Abstract We study the mixing time of the Glauber dynamics for general spin systems on bounded-degree trees, including the Ising model, the hard-core model (independent sets) and the antiferromagnetic Potts model at zero temperature (colorings). We generalize a framework, developed in our recent paper [20] in the context of the Ising model, for establishing mixing time O(n log n), which ties this property closely to phase transitions in the underlying model. We use this framework to obtain rapid mixing results for several models over a significantly wider range of parameter values than previously known, including situations in which the mixing time is strongly dependent on the boundary condition. We also discuss applications of our framework to reconstruction problems on trees. †A preliminary version of this paper appeared in Proceedings of the 15th ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms, January 2004. ‡Department of Mathematics, University of Roma Tre, Largo San Murialdo 1, 00146 Roma, Italy. Email: martin@mat.uniroma3.it. This work was done while this author was visiting the Departments of EECS and Statis- tics, University of California, Berkeley, supported in part by a Miller Visiting Professorship. §Computer Science Division, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-1776, U.S.A. Email: sinclair@. Supported in part by NSF Grant CCR-0121555 and DARPA cooperative agreement F30602-00-2-0601. ¶School of Mathematics, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ 08540, U.S.A. Email: dror@.