No Arabic abstract
In this paper, we study the phase transition behavior emerging from the interactions among multiple agents in the presence of noise. We propose a simple discrete-time model in which a group of non-mobile agents form either a fixed connected graph or a random graph process, and each agent, taking bipolar value either +1 or -1, updates its value according to its previous value and the noisy measurements of the values of the agents connected to it. We present proofs for the occurrence of the following phase transition behavior: At a noise level higher than some threshold, the system generates symmetric behavior (vapor or melt of magnetization) or disagreement; whereas at a noise level lower than the threshold, the system exhibits spontaneous symmetry breaking (solid or magnetization) or consensus. The threshold is found analytically. The phase transition occurs for any dimension. Finally, we demonstrate the phase transition behavior and all analytic results using simulations. This result may be found useful in the study of the collective behavior of complex systems under communication constraints.
We consider the problem of coloring the vertices of a large sparse random graph with a given number of colors so that no adjacent vertices have the same color. Using the cavity method, we present a detailed and systematic analytical study of the space of proper colorings (solutions). We show that for a fixed number of colors and as the average vertex degree (number of constraints) increases, the set of solutions undergoes several phase transitions similar to those observed in the mean field theory of glasses. First, at the clustering transition, the entropically dominant part of the phase space decomposes into an exponential number of pure states so that beyond this transition a uniform sampling of solutions becomes hard. Afterward, the space of solutions condenses over a finite number of the largest states and consequently the total entropy of solutions becomes smaller than the annealed one. Another transition takes place when in all the entropically dominant states a finite fraction of nodes freezes so that each of these nodes is allowed a single color in all the solutions inside the state. Eventually, above the coloring threshold, no more solutions are available. We compute all the critical connectivities for Erdos-Renyi and regular random graphs and determine their asymptotic values for large number of colors. Finally, we discuss the algorithmic consequences of our findings. We argue that the onset of computational hardness is not associated with the clustering transition and we suggest instead that the freezing transition might be the relevant phenomenon. We also discuss the performance of a simple local Walk-COL algorithm and of the belief propagation algorithm in the light of our results.
The rank of a graph is defined to be the rank of its adjacency matrix. A graph is called reduced if it has no isolated vertices and no two vertices with the same set of neighbors. Akbari, Cameron, and Khosrovshahi conjectured that the number of vertices of every reduced graph of rank r is at most $m(r)=2^{(r+2)/2}-2$ if r is even and $m(r) = 5cdot2^{(r-3)/2}-2$ if r is odd. In this article, we prove that if the conjecture is not true, then there would be a counterexample of rank at most $46$. We also show that every reduced graph of rank r has at most $8m(r)+14$ vertices.
We study an evolving spatial network in which sequentially arriving vertices are joined to existing vertices at random according to a rule that combines preference according to degree with preference according to spatial proximity. We investigate phase transitions in graph structure as the relative weighting of these two components of the attachment rule is varied. Previous work of one of the authors showed that when the geometric component is weak, the limiting degree sequence of the resulting graph coincides with that of the standard Barabasi--Albert preferential attachment model. We show that at the other extreme, in the case of a sufficiently strong geometric component, the limiting degree sequence coincides with that of a purely geometric model, the on-line nearest-neighbour graph, which is of interest in its own right and for which we prove some extensions of known results. We also show the presence of an intermediate regime, in which the behaviour differs significantly from both the on-line nearest-neighbour graph and the Barabasi--Albert model; in this regime, we obtain a stretched exponential upper bound on the degree sequence. Our results lend some mathematical support to simulation studies of Manna and Sen, while proving that the power law to stretched exponential phase transition occurs at a different point from the one conjectured by those authors.
A graph $Gamma$ is $k$-connected-homogeneous ($k$-CH) if $k$ is a positive integer and any isomorphism between connected induced subgraphs of order at most $k$ extends to an automorphism of $Gamma$, and connected-homogeneous (CH) if this property holds for all $k$. Locally finite, locally connected graphs often fail to be 4-CH because of a combinatorial obstruction called the unique $x$ property; we prove that this property holds for locally strongly regular graphs under various purely combinatorial assumptions. We then classify the locally finite, locally connected 4-CH graphs. We also classify the locally finite, locally disconnected 4-CH graphs containing 3-cycles and induced 4-cycles, and prove that, with the possible exception of locally disconnected graphs containing 3-cycles but no induced 4-cycles, every finite 7-CH graph is CH.
Graph-theoretic methods have seen wide use throughout the literature on multi-agent control and optimization. When communications are intermittent and unpredictable, such networks have been modeled using random communication graphs. When graphs are time-varying, it is common to assume that their unions are connected over time, yet, to the best of our knowledge, there are not results that determine the number of finite-size random graphs needed to attain a connected union. Therefore, this paper bounds the probability that individual random graphs are connected and bounds the same probability for connectedness of unions of random graphs. The random graph model used is a generalization of the classic Erdos-Renyi model which allows some edges never to appear. Numerical results are presented to illustrate the analytical developments made.