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arXiv · 1206.3193

Torpid Mixing of Local Markov Chains on 3-Colorings of the Discrete Torus

David Galvin·Dana Randall
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Abstract

We study local Markov chains for sampling 3-colorings of the discrete torus $T_{L,d}={0,..., L-1}^d$. We show that there is a constant $ρ\approx .22$ such that for all even $L \geq 4$ and $d$ sufficiently large, certain local Markov chains require exponential time to converge to equilibrium. More precisely, if $\cM$ is a Markov chain on the set of proper 3-colorings of $T_{L,d}$ that updates the color of at most $ρL^d$ vertices at each step and whose stationary distribution is uniform, then the convergence to stationarity of $\cM$ is exponential in $L^{d-1}$. Our proof is based on a conductance argument that builds on sensitive new combinatorial enumeration techniques.

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David Galvin, Dana Randall. 2012-06-14. Torpid Mixing of Local Markov Chains on 3-Colorings of the Discrete Torus. https://arxiv.org/abs/1206.3193

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