Message passing for the coloring problem: Gallager meets Alon and Kahale

Sonny Ben-Shimon, Dan Vilenchik
2007 Discrete Mathematics & Theoretical Computer Science  
International audience Message passing algorithms are popular in many combinatorial optimization problems. For example, experimental results show that \emphsurvey propagation (a certain message passing algorithm) is effective in finding proper k-colorings of random graphs in the near-threshold regime. In 1962 Gallager introduced the concept of Low Density Parity Check (LDPC) codes, and suggested a simple decoding algorithm based on message passing. In 1994 Alon and Kahale exhibited a coloring
more » ... gorithm and proved its usefulness for finding a k-coloring of graphs drawn from a certain planted-solution distribution over k-colorable graphs. In this work we show an interpretation of Alon and Kahale's coloring algorithm in light of Gallager's decoding algorithm, thus showing a connection between the two problems - coloring and decoding. This also provides a rigorous evidence for the usefulness of the message passing paradigm for the graph coloring problem.
doi:10.46298/dmtcs.3546 fatcat:vrjcaqrgc5ccfl4gob2vud426y