We present two randomised approximate counting algorithms with Õ(n^{2-c}/ε²) running time for some constant c > 0 and accuracy ε: 1) for the hard-core model with fugacity λ on graphs with maximum degree Δ when λ = O(Δ^{-1.5-c₁}) where c₁ = c/(2-2c); 2) for spin systems with strong spatial mixing (SSM) on planar graphs with quadratic growth, such as ℤ². For the hard-core model, Weitz’s algorithm (STOC, 2006) achieves sub-quadratic running time when correlation decays faster than the neighbourhood growth, namely when λ = o(Δ^{-2}). Our first algorithm does not require this property and extends the range where sub-quadratic algorithms exist. Our second algorithm appears to be the first to achieve sub-quadratic running time up to the SSM threshold, albeit on a restricted family of graphs. It also extends to (not necessarily planar) graphs with polynomial growth, such as ℤ^d, but with a running time of the form Õ(n²ε^{-2}/2^{c(log n)^{1/d}}) where d is the exponent of the polynomial growth and c > 0 is some constant.
@InProceedings{anand_et_al:LIPIcs.ICALP.2024.11, author = {Anand, Konrad and Feng, Weiming and Freifeld, Graham and Guo, Heng and Wang, Jiaheng}, title = {{Approximate Counting for Spin Systems in Sub-Quadratic Time}}, booktitle = {51st International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2024)}, pages = {11:1--11:20}, series = {Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)}, ISBN = {978-3-95977-322-5}, ISSN = {1868-8969}, year = {2024}, volume = {297}, editor = {Bringmann, Karl and Grohe, Martin and Puppis, Gabriele and Svensson, Ola}, publisher = {Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik}, address = {Dagstuhl, Germany}, URL = {https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2024.11}, URN = {urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-201543}, doi = {10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2024.11}, annote = {Keywords: Randomised algorithm, Approximate counting, Spin system, Sub-quadratic algorithm} }
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