We analyse the performance of Belief Propagation Guided Decimation, a physics-inspired message passing algorithm, on the random k-XORSAT problem. Specifically, we derive an explicit threshold up to which the algorithm succeeds with a strictly positive probability Ω(1) that we compute explicitly, but beyond which the algorithm with high probability fails to find a satisfying assignment. In addition, we analyse a thought experiment called the decimation process for which we identify a (non-) reconstruction and a condensation phase transition. The main results of the present work confirm physics predictions from [Ricci-Tersenghi and Semerjian: J. Stat. Mech. 2009] that link the phase transitions of the decimation process with the performance of the algorithm, and improve over partial results from a recent article [Yung: Proc. ICALP 2024].
@InProceedings{chatterjee_et_al:LIPIcs.ICALP.2025.47, author = {Chatterjee, Arnab and Coja-Oghlan, Amin and Kang, Mihyun and Krieg, Lena and Rolvien, Maurice and Sorkin, Gregory B.}, title = {{Belief Propagation Guided Decimation on Random k-XORSAT}}, booktitle = {52nd International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2025)}, pages = {47:1--47:21}, series = {Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)}, ISBN = {978-3-95977-372-0}, ISSN = {1868-8969}, year = {2025}, volume = {334}, editor = {Censor-Hillel, Keren and Grandoni, Fabrizio and Ouaknine, Jo\"{e}l and Puppis, Gabriele}, publisher = {Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik}, address = {Dagstuhl, Germany}, URL = {https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2025.47}, URN = {urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-234248}, doi = {10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2025.47}, annote = {Keywords: random k-XORSAT, belief propagation, decimation process, random matrices} }
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