Based on a non-rigorous formalism called the “cavity method”, physicists have put forward intriguing predictions on phase transitions in diluted mean-field models, in which the geometry of interactions is induced by a sparse random graph or hypergraph. One example of such a model is the graph coloring problem on the Erdős–Renyi random graph G(n, d n), which can be viewed as the zero temperature case of the Potts antiferromagnet. The cavity method predicts that in addition to the k-colorability phase transition studied intensively in combinatorics, there exists a second phase transition called the condensation phase transition ( in Proc Natl Acad Sci 104:10318–10323, 2007). In fact, there is a conjecture as to the precise location of this phase transition in terms of a certain distributional fixed point problem. In this paper we prove this conjecture for k exceeding a certain constant k0.
If the planted distribution is close to @math , one might think that the function @math is difficult to invert. Indeed, it should be difficult to find any @math -coloring of @math , not to mention the planted coloring @math . As shown in @cite_27 , the planted distribution and @math are interchangeable (in a certain precise sense) iff @math . Hence, @math marks the point where these two distributions start to differ. In particular, shows that at the @math -colorability threshold, the two distributions are not interchangeable. In effect, experimental evidence that coloring @math is difficult'' at or near @math is inconclusive with respect to the problem of finding a @math -coloring in the planted model (which may, of course, well be difficult for some other reason).
@cite_27
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Consider a uniform random rooted tree on vertices labelled by @math , with edges directed towards the root. We imagine that each node of the tree has space for a single car to park. A number @math of cars arrive one by one, each at a node chosen independently and uniformly at random. If a car arrives at a space which is already occupied, it follows the unique path oriented towards the root until it encounters an empty space, in which case it parks there; if there is no empty space, it leaves the tree. Consider @math and let @math denote the event that all @math cars find spaces in the tree. Lackner and Panholzer proved (via analytic combinatorics methods) that there is a phase transition in this model. Then if @math , we have @math , whereas if @math we have @math . We give a probabilistic explanation for this phenomenon, and an alternative proof via the objective method. Along the way, we are led to consider the following variant of the problem: take the tree to be the family tree of a Galton-Watson branching process with Poisson(1) offspring distribution, and let an independent Poisson( @math ) number of cars arrive at each vertex. Let @math be the number of cars which visit the root of the tree. Then for @math , we have @math , whereas for @math , we have @math . This discontinuous phase transition turns out to be a generic phenomenon in settings with an arbitrary offspring distribution of mean at least 1 for the tree and arbitrary arrival distribution. The is the following problem: a coin is given, which lands on head with probability either @math or @math . We are given the outcome of @math independent tosses of this coin, and the goal is to guess which way the coin is biased, and to answer correctly with probability @math . When our computational model is unrestricted, the majority function is optimal, and succeeds when @math for a large enough constant @math . The coin problem is open and interesting in models that cannot compute the majority function. In this paper we study the coin problem in the model of . We prove that in order to succeed in this model, @math must be at least @math . For constant @math this is tight by considering the recursive tribes function, and for other values of @math this is nearly tight by considering other read-once AND-OR trees. We generalize this to a , where instead of independent tosses of a coin we are given independent tosses of one of two @math -sided dice. We prove that if the distributions are too close and the mass of each side of the dice is not too small, then the dice cannot be distinguished by small-width read-once branching programs. We suggest one application for this kind of theorems: we prove that Nisan's Generator fools width- @math read-once branching programs, using seed length @math . For @math , this seed length is @math . The coin theorem and its relatives might have other connections to PRGs. This application is related to the independent, but chronologically-earlier, work of Braver man, Rao, Raz and Yehudayoff BRRY . We study a one-parameter family of discrete dynamical systems called the @math -color firefly cellular automata (FCAs), which were introduced recently by the author. At each discrete time @math , each vertex in a graph has a state in @math , and a special state @math is designated as the blinking' state. At step @math , simultaneously for all vertices, the state of a vertex increments from @math to @math unless @math and at least one of its neighbors is in the state @math . A central question about this system is that on what class of network topologies synchrony is guaranteed to emerge. In a previous work, we have shown that for @math , every @math -coloring on a finite tree synchronizes iff the maximum degree is less than @math , and asked whether this behavior holds for all @math . In this paper, we answer the question positively for @math and negatively for all @math by constructing counterexamples on trees with maximum degree at most @math . Let @math be a uniformly distributed random @math -SAT formula with @math variables and @math clauses. For clauses variables ratio @math the formula @math is satisfiable with high probability. However, no efficient algorithm is known to provably find a satisfying assignment beyond @math with a non-vanishing probability. Non-rigorous statistical mechanics work on @math -CNF led to the development of a new efficient "message passing algorithm" called [M ', Science 2002]. Experiments conducted for @math suggest that the algorithm finds satisfying assignments close to @math . However, in the present paper we prove that the basic version of Survey Propagation Guided Decimation fails to solve random @math -SAT formulas efficiently already for @math with @math almost a factor @math below @math .