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Sampling Arborescences in Parallel

Authors Nima Anari, Nathan Hu, Amin Saberi, Aaron Schild

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ACM Subject Classification
  • Theory of computation → Parallel algorithms
  • Theory of computation → Generating random combinatorial structures
  • Theory of computation → Random walks and Markov chains
Keywords
  • parallel algorithms
  • arborescences
  • spanning trees
  • random sampling

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Abstract

We study the problem of sampling a uniformly random directed rooted spanning tree, also known as an arborescence, from a possibly weighted directed graph. Classically, this problem has long been known to be polynomial-time solvable; the exact number of arborescences can be computed by a determinant [Tutte, 1948], and sampling can be reduced to counting [Jerrum et al., 1986; Jerrum and Sinclair, 1996]. However, the classic reduction from sampling to counting seems to be inherently sequential. This raises the question of designing efficient parallel algorithms for sampling. We show that sampling arborescences can be done in RNC.
For several well-studied combinatorial structures, counting can be reduced to the computation of a determinant, which is known to be in NC [Csanky, 1975]. These include arborescences, planar graph perfect matchings, Eulerian tours in digraphs, and determinantal point processes. However, not much is known about efficient parallel sampling of these structures. Our work is a step towards resolving this mystery.

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Nima Anari, Nathan Hu, Amin Saberi, and Aaron Schild. Sampling Arborescences in Parallel. In 12th Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science Conference (ITCS 2021). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 185, pp. 83:1-83:18, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2021) https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.ITCS.2021.83

Author Details

Nima Anari
  • Stanford University, CA, USA
Nathan Hu
  • Stanford University, CA, USA
Amin Saberi
  • Stanford University, CA, USA
Aaron Schild
  • University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

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