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SIAM Journal on Discrete Mathematics


Volume 25, Issue 2

Reconstruction and Clustering in Random Constraint Satisfaction Problems

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Article Data

History

Submitted: 13  April  2009
Accepted: 07 March 2011
Published online: 01 July 2011

Publication Data

ISSN (print): 0895-4801
ISSN (online): 1095-7146
CODEN: sjdmec

Random instances of constraint satisfaction problems (CSPs) appear to be hard for all known algorithms when the number of constraints per variable lies in a certain interval. Contributing to the general understanding of the structure of the solution space of a CSP in the satisfiable regime, we formulate a set of technical conditions on a large family of random CSPs and prove bounds on three most interesting thresholds for the density of such an ensemble: namely, the satisfiability threshold, the threshold for clustering of the solution space, and the threshold for an appropriate reconstruction problem on the CSPs. The bounds become asymptoticlally tight as the number of degrees of freedom in each clause diverges. The families are general enough to include commonly studied problems such as random instances of Not-All-Equal SAT, k-XOR formulae, hypergraph 2-coloring, and graph k-coloring. An important new ingredient is a condition involving the Fourier expansion of clauses, which characterizes the class of problems with a similar threshold structure.

Copyright © 2011 Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics

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