arXiv subjects

Ben Young

Publications and source records attributed to Ben Young.

15 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

A Dense Weisfeiler-Leman Algorithm for Deciding Bounded-Cliquewidth Homomorphism Indistinguishability

Two graphs $G$ and $H$ are homomorphism indistinguishable over a graph class $\mathcal{F}$ if they admit the same number of homomorphisms from every graph in $\mathcal{F}$. A wide range of relaxations of graph isomorphism arise this way: isomorphism itself over the class of all graphs [Lov\'asz, Acta Math. Hung. 1967], equivalence under the $k$-dimensional Weisfeiler-Leman algorithm over the graphs of treewidth $\leq k$ [Dvo\v{r}\'ak, J. Graph Theory 2010], and quantum isomorphism over planar graphs [Man\v{c}inska-Roberson, FOCS 2020]. Since the class $\mathcal{F}$ is typically infinite, it is not clear a priori whether homomorphism indistinguishability over $\mathcal{F}$ is decidable; for planar graphs it is undecidable. Every class for which decidability was previously known is sparse. We give the first decidability results for dense graph classes: We introduce the dense Weisfeiler-Leman algorithm that decides homomorphism indistinguishability over the class of graphs of cliquewidth $\leq k$, the dense counterpart of treewidth. This relation was not previously known to be decidable. The algorithm colors $k$-tuples of vertex subsets rather than $k$-tuples of vertices. Beyond the class of all graphs of cliquewidth $\leq k$, we prove a general meta-theorem: homomorphism indistinguishability over every $\mathsf{CMSO}_1$-definable graph class of bounded cliquewidth is decidable, in randomized exponential time. For classes of bounded linear cliquewidth the bound improves to $\mathsf{PSPACE}$, and we show this is tight by exhibiting such a class for which the problem is $\mathsf{PSPACE}$-complete. These are the first general algorithms for homomorphism indistinguishability over dense graph classes.

cs.LO↗

arXiv2026

Planar Graph Homomorphisms: A Dichotomy and a Barrier from Quantum Groups

We study the complexity of counting (weighted) planar graph homomorphism problem $\tt{Pl\text{-}GH}(M)$ parametrized by an arbitrary symmetric non-negative real valued matrix $M$. For matrices with pairwise distinct diagonal values, we prove a complete dichotomy theorem: $\tt{Pl\text{-}GH}(M)$ is either polynomial-time tractable, or $\#$P-hard, according to a simple criterion. More generally, we obtain a dichotomy whenever every vertex pair of the graph represented by $M$ can be separated using some planar edge gadget. A key question in proving complexity dichotomies in the planar setting is the expressive power of planar edge gadgets. We build on the framework of Man\v{c}inska and Roberson to establish links between \textit{planar} edge gadgets and the theory of the \textit{quantum automorphism group} $\tt{Qut}(M)$. We show that planar edge gadgets that can separate vertex pairs of $M$ exist precisely when $\tt{Qut}(M)$ is \emph{trivial}, and prove that the problem of whether $\tt{Qut}(M)$ is trivial is undecidable. These results delineate the frontier for planar homomorphism counting problems and uncover intrinsic barriers to extending nonplanar reduction techniques to the planar setting.

cs.CC↗

arXiv2025

Vanishing Signatures, Orbit Closure, and the Converse of the Holant Theorem

Valiant's Holant theorem is a powerful tool for algorithms and reductions for counting problems. It states that if two sets $\mathcal{F}$ and $\mathcal{G}$ of tensors (a.k.a. constraint functions or signatures) are related by a \emph{holographic transformation}, then $\mathcal{F}$ and $\mathcal{G}$ are \emph{Holant-indistinguishable}, i.e., every tensor network using tensors from $\mathcal{F}$, resp. from $\mathcal{G}$, contracts to the same value. Xia (ICALP 2010) conjectured the converse of the Holant theorem, but a counterexample was found based on \emph{vanishing} signatures, those which are Holant-indistinguishable from 0. We prove two near-converses of the Holant theorem using techniques from invariant theory. (I) Holant-indistinguishable $\mathcal{F}$ and $\mathcal{G}$ always admit two sequences of holographic transformations mapping them arbitrarily close to each other, i.e., their $\text{GL}_q$-orbit closures intersect. (II) We show that vanishing signatures are the only true obstacle to a converse of the Holant theorem. As corollaries of the two theorems we obtain the first characterization of homomorphism-indistinguishability over graphs of bounded degree, a long standing open problem, and show that two graphs with invertible adjacency matrices are isomorphic if and only if they are homomorphism-indistinguishable over graphs with maximum degree at most three. We also show that Holant-indistinguishability is complete for a complexity class \textbf{TOCI} introduced by Lysikov and Walter, and hence hard for graph isomorphism.

cs.DM↗

arXiv2024

Quantum Algorithms for Discrete Log Require Precise Rotations

Recently, Cai showed that Shor's quantum factoring algorithm fails to factor large integers when the algorithm's quantum Fourier transform (QFT) is corrupted by a vanishing level of random noise on the QFT's precise controlled rotation gates. We show that under the same error model, Shor's quantum discrete log algorithm, and its various modifications, fail to compute discrete logs modulo P for a positive density of primes P and a similarly vanishing level of noise. We also show that the same noise level causes Shor's algorithm to fail with probability 1-o(1) to compute discrete logs modulo P for randomly selected primes P.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2024

Jack combinatorics of the equivariant edge measure

We study the equivariant edge measure: a measure on partitions which arises implicitly in the edge term in the localization computation of the Donaldson-Thomas invariants of a toric threefold. We combinatorially show that the equivariant edge measure is, up to choices of convention, equal to the Jack-Plancherel measure.

math.CO↗

arXiv2024

The Converse of the Real Orthogonal Holant Theorem

The Holant theorem is a powerful tool for studying the computational complexity of counting problems in the Holant framework. Due to the great expressiveness of the Holant framework, a converse to the Holant theorem would itself be a very powerful counting indistinguishability theorem. The most general converse does not hold, but we prove the following, still highly general, version: if any two sets of real-valued signatures are Holant-indistinguishable, then they are equivalent up to an orthogonal transformation. This resolves a partially open conjecture of Xia (2010). Consequences of this theorem include the well-known result that homomorphism counts from all graphs determine a graph up to isomorphism, the classical sufficient condition for simultaneous orthogonal similarity of sets of real matrices, and a combinatorial characterization of simultaneosly orthogonally decomposable (odeco) sets of symmetric tensors.

cs.DM↗

arXiv2024

On the enumeration of series-parallel matroids

By the work of Ferroni and Larson, Kazhdan-Lusztig polynomials and Z-polynomials of complete graphs have combinatorial interpretations in terms of quasi series-parallel matroids. We provide explicit formulas for the number of series-parallel matroids and the number of simple series-parallel matroids of a given rank and cardinality, extending results of Ferroni-Larson and Gao-Proudfoot-Yang-Zhang.

math.CO↗

arXiv2022

Planar #CSP Equality Corresponds to Quantum Isomorphism -- A Holant Viewpoint

Recently, Man\v{c}inska and Roberson proved that two graphs $G$ and $G'$ are quantum isomorphic if and only if they admit the same number of homomorphisms from all planar graphs. We extend this result to planar #CSP with any pair of sets $\mathcal{F}$ and $\mathcal{F}'$ of real-valued, arbitrary-arity constraint functions. Graph homomorphism is the special case where each of $\mathcal{F}$ and $\mathcal{F}'$ contains a single symmetric 0-1-valued binary constraint function. Our treatment uses the framework of planar Holant problems. To prove that quantum isomorphic constraint function sets give the same value on any planar #CSP instance, we apply a novel form of holographic transformation of Valiant, using the quantum permutation matrix $\mathcal{U}$ defining the quantum isomorphism. Due to the noncommutativity of $\mathcal{U}$'s entries, it turns out that this form of holographic transformation is only applicable to planar Holant. To prove the converse, we introduce the quantum automorphism group Qut$(\mathcal{F})$ of a set of constraint functions $\mathcal{F}$, and characterize the intertwiners of Qut$(\mathcal{F})$ as the signature matrices of planar Holant$(\mathcal{F}\,|\,\mathcal{EQ})$ quantum gadgets. Then we define a new notion of (projective) connectivity for constraint functions and reduce arity while preserving the quantum automorphism group. Finally, to address the challenges posed by generalizing from 0-1 valued to real-valued constraint functions, we adapt a technique of Lov\'asz in the classical setting for isomorphisms of real-weighted graphs to the setting of quantum isomorphisms.

cs.DM↗

arXiv2022

Equality on all #CSP Instances Yields Constraint Function Isomorphism via Interpolation and Intertwiners

A fundamental result in the study of graph homomorphisms is Lov\'asz's theorem that two graphs are isomorphic if and only if they admit the same number of homomorphisms from every graph. A line of work extending Lov\'asz's result to more general types of graphs was recently capped by Cai and Govorov, who showed that it holds for graphs with vertex and edge weights from an arbitrary field of characteristic 0. In this work, we generalize from graph homomorphism -- a special case of #CSP with a single binary function -- to general #CSP by showing that two sets $\mathcal{F}$ and $\mathcal{G}$ of arbitrary constraint functions are isomorphic if and only if the partition function of any #CSP instance is unchanged when we replace the functions in $\mathcal{F}$ with those in $\mathcal{G}$. We give two very different proofs of this result. First, we demonstrate the power of the simple Vandermonde interpolation technique of Cai and Govorov by extending it to general #CSP. Second, we give a proof using the intertwiners of the automorphism group of a constraint function set, a concept from the representation theory of compact groups. This proof is a generalization of a classical version of the recent proof of the Lov\'asz-type result by Man\v{c}inska and Roberson relating quantum isomorphism and homomorphisms from planar graphs.

cs.DM↗

arXiv2019

Multi-color forcing in graphs

Let $G=(V,E)$ be a finite connected graph along with a coloring of the vertices of $G$ using the colors in a given set $X$. In this paper, we introduce multi-color forcing, a generalization of zero-forcing on graphs, and give conditions in which the multi-color forcing process terminates regardless of the number of colors used. We give an upper bound on the number of steps required to terminate a forcing procedure in terms of the number of vertices in the graph on which the procedure is being applied. We then focus on multi-color forcing with three colors and analyze the end states of certain families of graphs, including complete graphs, complete bipartite graphs, and paths, based on various initial colorings. We end with a few directions for future research.

math.CO↗

arXiv2019

Configuration spaces, $\operatorname{FS^{op}}$-modules, and Kazhdan-Lusztig polynomials of braid matroids

The equivariant Kazhdan-Lusztig polynomial of a braid matroid may be interpreted as the intersection cohomology of a certain partial compactification of the configuration space of n distinct labeled points in the plane, regarded as a graded representation of the symmetric group. We show that, in fixed cohomological degree, this sequence of representations of symmetric groups naturally admits the structure of an FS-module, and that the dual FS^op-module is finitely generated. Using the work of Sam and Snowden, we give an asymptotic formula for the dimensions of these representations and obtain restrictions on which irreducible representations can appear in their decomposition.

math.RT↗

arXiv2017

The Z-polynomial of a matroid

We introduce the Z-polynomial of a matroid, which we define in terms of the Kazhdan-Lusztig polynomial. We then exploit a symmetry of the Z-polynomial to derive a new recursion for Kazhdan-Lusztig coefficients. We solve this recursion, obtaining a closed formula for Kazhdan-Lusztig coefficients as alternating sums of multi-indexed Whitney numbers. For realizable matroids, we give a cohomological interpretation of the Z-polynomial in which the symmetry is a manifestation of Poincare duality.

math.CO↗

arXiv2016

The equivariant Kazhdan-Lusztig polynomial of a matroid

We define the equivariant Kazhdan-Lusztig polynomial of a matroid equipped with a group of symmetries, generalizing the nonequivariant case. We compute this invariant for arbitrary uniform matroids and for braid matroids of small rank.

math.CO↗

arXiv2016

The Orlik-Terao algebra and the cohomology of configuration space

We give a recursive algorithm for computing the Orlik-Terao algebra of the Coxeter arrangement of type A_{n-1} as a graded representation of S_n, and we give a conjectural description of this representation in terms of the cohomology of the configuration space of n points in SU(2) modulo translation. We also give a version of this conjecture for more general graphical arrangements.

math.RT↗

arXiv2010

The Orbifold Topological Vertex

We define Donaldson-Thomas invariants of Calabi-Yau orbifolds and we develop a topological vertex formalism for computing them. The basic combinatorial object is the orbifold vertex, a generating function for the number of 3D partitions asymptotic to three given 2D partitions and colored by representations of a finite Abelian group G acting on C^3. In the case where G=Z_n acting on C^3 with transverse A_{n-1} quotient singularities, we give an explicit formula for the vertex in terms of Schur functions. We discuss applications of our formalism to the Donaldson-Thomas Crepant Resolution Conjecture and to the orbifold Donaldson-Thomas/Gromov-Witten correspondence. We also explicitly compute the Donaldson-Thomas partition function for some simple orbifold geometries: the local football and the local BZ_2 gerbe.

math.AG↗