For random combinatorial optimization problems, there has been much progress in establishing laws of large numbers and computing limiting constants for the optimal value of various problems. However, there has not been as much success in proving central limit theorems. This paper introduces a method for establishing central limit theorems in the sparse graph setting. It works for problems which display a key property which has been variously called "endogeny", "long-range independence", and "replica symmetry" in the literature. Examples of such problems are maximum weight matching, $λ$-diluted minimum matching, and optimal edge cover.
We consider the $t$-improper chromatic number of the Erd{\H o}s-R{é}nyi random graph $G(n,p)$. The t-improper chromatic number $χ^t(G)$ of $G$ is the smallest number of colours needed in a colouring of the vertices in which each colour class induces a subgraph of maximum degree at most $t$. If $t = 0$, then this is the usual notion of proper colouring. When the edge probability $p$ is constant, we provide a detailed description of the asymptotic behaviour of $χ^t(G(n,p))$ over the range of choices for the growth of $t = t(n)$.
We consider the near-critical Erdős-Rényi random graph $G(n,p)$ and provide a new probabilistic proof of the fact that, when $p$ is of the form $p=p(n)=1/n+λ/n^{4/3}$ and $A$ is large, \[\mathbb{P}(|\mathcal{C}_{\max}|>An^{2/3})\asymp A^{-3/2}e^{-\frac{A^3}{8}+\frac{λA^2}{2}-\frac{λ^2A}{2}}\] where $\mathcal{C}_{\max}$ is the largest connected component of the graph. Our result allows $A$ and $λ$ to depend on $n$. While this result is already known, our proof relies only on conceptual and adaptable tools such as ballot theorems, whereas the existing proof relies on a combinatorial formula spec…
The classical Erdős-Littlewood-Offord problem concerns the random variable $X = a_1 ξ_1 + \dots + a_n ξ_n$, where $a_i \in \mathbb{R} \setminus \{0\}$ are fixed and $ξ_i \sim \text{Ber}(1/2)$ are independent. The Erdős-Littlewood-Offord theorem states that the maximum possible concentration probability $\max_{x \in \mathbb{R}} \Pr(X = x)$ is $\binom{n}{\lfloor n/2\rfloor} / 2^n$, achieved when the $a_i$ are all $1$. As proposed by Fox, Kwan, and Sauermann, we investigate the general case where $ξ_i \sim \text{Ber}(p)$ instead. Using purely combinatorial techniques, we show that the exact maxim…
We prove a local law for the adjacency matrix of the Erdős-Rényi graph $G(N, p)$ in the supercritical regime $ pN \geq C\log N$ where $G(N,p)$ has with high probability no isolated vertices. In the same regime, we also prove the complete delocalization of the eigenvectors. Both results are false in the complementary subcritical regime. Our result improves the corresponding results from [11] by extending them all the way down to the critical scale $pN = O(\log N)$. A key ingredient of our proof is a new family of multilinear large deviation estimates for sparse random vectors, which carefully b…
The Erdős-Rényi process begins with an empty graph on n vertices and edges are added randomly one at a time to a graph. A classical result of Erdős and Rényi states that the Erdős-Rényi process undergoes a phase transition, which takes place when the number of edges reaches n/2 (we say at time 1) and a giant component emerges. Since this seminal work of Erdős and Rényi, various random graph models have been introduced and studied. In this paper we study the so-called Bohman-Frieze process, a simple modification of the Erdős-Rényi process. The Bohman-Frieze process begins with an empty graph on…
Two landmark results in combinatorial random matrix theory, due to Komlós and Costello-Tao-Vu, show that discrete random matrices and symmetric discrete random matrices are typically nonsingular. In particular, in the language of graph theory, when $p$ is a fixed constant, the biadjacency matrix of a random Erdős-Rényi bipartite graph $\mathbb{G}(n,n,p)$ and the adjacency matrix of an Erdős-Rényi random graph $\mathbb{G}(n,p)$ are both nonsingular with high probability. However, very sparse random graphs (i.e., where $p$ is allowed to decay rapidly with $n$) are typically singular, due to the …
Let $\FF$ be an arbitrary field and $(\bm{G}_{n,d/n})_n$ be a sequence of sparse weighted Erdős-Rényi random graphs on $n$ vertices with edge probability $d/n$, where weights from $\FF \setminus\{0\}$ are assigned to the edges according to a fixed matrix $J_n$. We show that the normalised rank of the adjacency matrix of $(\bm{G}_{n,d/n})_n$ converges in probability to a constant, and derive the limiting expression. Our result shows that for the general class of sparse symmetric matrices under consideration, the asymptotics of the normalised rank are independent of the edge weights and even the…
We provide a general result for bounding the difference between point probabilities of integer supported distributions and the translated Poisson distribution, a convenient alternative to the discretized normal. We illustrate our theorem in the context of the Hoeffding combinatorial central limit theorem with integer valued summands, of the number of isolated vertices in an Erdős-Rényi random graph, and of the Curie-Weiss model of magnetism, where we provide optimal or near optimal rates of convergence in the local limit metric. In the Hoeffding example, even the discrete normal approximation …
We establish the existence of free energy limits for several combinatorial models on Erdös-Rényi graph $\mathbb {G}(N,\lfloor cN\rfloor)$ and random $r$-regular graph $\mathbb {G}(N,r)$. For a variety of models, including independent sets, MAX-CUT, coloring and K-SAT, we prove that the free energy both at a positive and zero temperature, appropriately rescaled, converges to a limit as the size of the underlying graph diverges to infinity. In the zero temperature case, this is interpreted as the existence of the scaling limit for the corresponding combinatorial optimization problem. For example…
A recent line of work has studied the relationship between the Wishart matrix $X^\top X$, where $X\in \mathbb{R}^{d\times n}$ has i.i.d. standard Gaussian entries, and the corresponding Gaussian matrix with independent entries above the diagonal. Jiang and Li (2015) and Bubeck et al. (2016) showed that these two matrix ensembles converge in total variation whenever $d/n^3\to \infty$, and Bubeck et al. (2016) showed this to be sharp. In this paper we aim to identify the precise threshold for $d$ in terms of $n$ for subsets of Wishart matrices to converge in total variation to independent Gaussi…
We consider the problem of reconstructing graphs or labeled graphs from neighborhoods of a given radius r. Special instances of this problem include the well known: DNA shotgun assembly; the lesser-known: neural network reconstruction; and a new problem: assembling random jigsaw puzzles. We provide some necessary and some sufficient conditions for correct recovery both in combinatorial terms and for some generative models including random labelings of lattices, Erdos-Renyi random graphs, and the random jigsaw puzzle model. Many open problems and conjectures are provided.
