We prove a tight upper bound on the independence polynomial (and total number of independent sets) of cubic graphs of girth at least 5. The bound is achieved by unions of the Heawood graph, the point line incidence graph of the Fano plane. We also give a tight lower bound on the total number of independent sets of triangle-free cubic graphs. This bound is achieved by unions of the Petersen graph. We conjecture that in fact all Moore graphs are extremal for the scaled number of independent sets in regular graphs of a given minimum girth, maximizing this quantity if their girth is even and minimizing if odd. The Heawood and Petersen graphs are instances of this conjecture, along with complete graphs, complete bipartite graphs, and cycles.
The art in applying the method is choosing the right local view and which consistency conditions to impose. Enriching the local view as we have done here adds power to the optimization program, but comes at the cost of increasing the complexity of the resulting linear program. As an example, compare the upper bound on the independence polynomial in @math -regular triangle-free graphs @cite_9 with the lower bound for @math -regular triangle-free graphs given by Theorem : the proof of the first is short and elementary, while the proof of the second requires (at least in this iteration) a large mass of calculations given in the appendix and in the ancillary files.
@cite_9
2963702702 2964154443 2609757535 1964207488
We prove tight upper bounds on the logarithmic derivative of the independence and matching polynomials of d-regular graphs. For independent sets, this theorem is a strengthening of Kahn's result that a disjoint union of copies of Kd;d maximizes the number of independent sets of a bipartite d-regular graph, Galvin and Tet ali's result that the independence polynomial is maximized by the same, and Zhao's extension of both results to all d-regular graphs. For matchings, this shows that the matching polynomial and the total number of matchings of a d-regular graph are maximized by a union of copies of Kd;d. Using this we prove the asymptotic upper matching conjecture of Friedland, Krop, Lundow, and Markstrom. In probabilistic language, our main theorems state that for all d-regular graphs and all �, the occupancy fraction of the hard-core model and the edge occupancy fraction of the monomer-dimer model with fugacity � are maximized by Kd;d. Our method involves constrained optimization problems over distributions of random variables and applies to all d-regular graphs directly, without a reduction to the bipartite case. Using a variant of the method we prove a lower bound on the occupancy fraction of the hard-core model on any d-regular, vertex-transitive, bipartite graph: the occupancy fraction of such a graph is strictly greater than the occupancy fraction of the unique translationinvariant hard-core measure on the infinite d-regular tree Let @math be a @math -regular triangle-free graph with @math edges. We present an algorithm which finds a cut in @math with at least @math edges in expectation, improving upon Shearer's classic result. In particular, this implies that any @math -regular triangle-free graph has a cut of at least this size, and thus, we obtain a new lower bound for the maximum number of edges in a bipartite subgraph of @math . Our algorithm is simpler than Shearer's classic algorithm and it can be interpreted as a very efficient randomised distributed (local) algorithm : each node needs to produce only one random bit, and the algorithm runs in one round. The randomised algorithm itself was discovered using computational techniques . We show that for any fixed @math , there exists a weighted neighbourhood graph @math such that there is a one-to-one correspondence between heavy cuts of @math and randomised local algorithms that find large cuts in any @math -regular input graph. This turns out to be a useful tool for analysing the existence of cuts in @math -regular graphs: we can compute the optimal cut of @math to attain a lower bound on the maximum cut size of any @math -regular triangle-free graph. Understanding the local behaviour of structured multi-dimensional data is a fundamental problem in various areas of computer science. As the amount of data is often huge, it is desirable to obtain sublinear time algorithms, and specifically property testers, to understand local properties of the data. We focus on the natural local problem of testing pattern freeness: given a large @math -dimensional array @math and a fixed @math -dimensional pattern @math over a finite alphabet, we say that @math is @math -free if it does not contain a copy of the forbidden pattern @math as a consecutive subarray. The distance of @math to @math -freeness is the fraction of entries of @math that need to be modified to make it @math -free. For any @math and any large enough pattern @math over any alphabet, other than a very small set of exceptional patterns, we design a tolerant tester that distinguishes between the case that the distance is at least @math and the case that it is at most @math , with query complexity and running time @math , where @math and @math depend only on @math . To analyze the testers we establish several combinatorial results, including the following @math -dimensional modification lemma, which might be of independent interest: for any large enough pattern @math over any alphabet (excluding a small set of exceptional patterns for the binary case), and any array @math containing a copy of @math , one can delete this copy by modifying one of its locations without creating new @math -copies in @math . Our results address an open question of Fischer and Newman, who asked whether there exist efficient testers for properties related to tight substructures in multi-dimensional structured data. They serve as a first step towards a general understanding of local properties of multi-dimensional arrays, as any such property can be characterized by a fixed family of forbidden patterns. We investigate nonparametric multiproduct pricing problems, in which we want to find revenue maximizing prices for products @math based on a set of customer samples @math . We mostly focus on the unit-demand case, in which products constitute strict substitutes and each customer aims to purchase a single product. In this setting a customer sample consists of a number of nonzero values for different products and possibly an additional product ranking. Once prices are fixed, each customer chooses to buy one of the products she can afford based on some predefined selection rule. We distinguish between the min-buying, max-buying, and rank-buying models. Some of our results also extend to single-minded pricing, in which case products are strict complements and every customer seeks to buy a single set of products, which she purchases if the sum of prices is below her valuation for that set. For the min-buying model we show that the revenue maximization problem is not approximable within factor @math for some constant @math , unless @math , thereby almost closing the gap between the known algorithmic results and previous lower bounds. We also prove inapproximability within @math , @math being an upper bound on the number of nonzero values per customer, and @math under slightly stronger assumptions and provide matching upper bounds. Surprisingly, these hardness results hold even if a price ladder constraint, i.e., a predefined order on the prices of all products, is given. Without the price ladder constraint we obtain similar hardness results for the special case of uniform valuations, i.e., the case that every customer has identical values for all the products she is interested in, assuming specific hardness of the balanced bipartite independent set problem in constant degree graphs or hardness of refuting random 3CNF formulas. Introducing a slightly more general problem definition in which customers are given as an explicit probability distribution, we obtain inapproximability within @math assuming @math . These results apply to single-minded pricing as well. For the max-buying model a polynomial-time approximation scheme exists if a price ladder is given. We give a matching lower bound by proving strong NP-hardness. Assuming limited product supply, we analyze a generic local search algorithm and prove that it is 2-approximate. Finally, we discuss implications for the rank-buying model.