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On the Complexity of Holant Problems

Heng Guo, Pinyan Lu

Published Jan 1, 2017• 0 citations
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Abstract

In this article we survey recent developments on the complexity of Holant problems. We discuss three different aspects of Holant problems: the decision version, exact counting, and approximate counting.
DOI
10.4230/dfu.vol7.15301.159

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We propose and explore a novel alternative framework to study the complexity of counting problems, called Holant problems. Compared to counting constraint satisfaction problems (#CSP), it is a refinement with a more explicit role for the constraint functions. Both graph homomorphism and #CSP can be viewed as special cases of Holant problems. We prove complexity dichotomy theorems in this framework. Our dichotomy theorems apply to local constraint functions, which are symmetric functions on Boolean input variables and evaluate to arbitrary real or complex values. We discover surprising tractable subclasses of counting problems, which could not easily be specified in the #CSP framework. When all unary functions are assumed to be free (Holant∗\mathrm{Holant}^*Holant∗ problems), the tractable ones consist of functions that are degenerate, or of arity at most two, or holographic transformations of Fibonacci gates. When only two special unary functions, the constant zero and constant one functions, are assumed to be free (Holantc\mathrm{Holant}^cHolantc problems), we further identify three special families of tractable cases. Then we prove that all other cases are #P-hard. The main technical tool we use and develop is holographic reductions. Another technical tool used in combination with holographic reductions is polynomial interpolations.
In computational complexity theory, we distinguish decision, optimization, counting and sampling problems. Although this book is about the computational complexity of counting and sampling, counting and sampling problems are related to decision and optimization problems. Counting problems are always at least as hard as their decision counterparts. Indeed, if we can tell, say, the number of perfect matchings in a graph G , then naturally we can tell if there exists a perfect matching in G : G contains a perfect matching if and only if the number of perfect matchings in G is at least 1.
Holant is an essential framework in the field of counting complexity. For over fifteen years, researchers have been clarifying the complexity classification for complex-valued Holant on Boolean domain, a challenge that remains unresolved. In this article, we prove a complexity dichotomy for complex-valued Holant on Boolean domain when a non-trivial signature of odd arity exists. This dichotomy is based on the dichotomy for #EO, and consequently is an FP^NP vs. #P dichotomy as well, stating that each problem is either in FP^NP or #P-hard. Furthermore, we establish a generalized version of the decomposition lemma for complex-valued Holant on Boolean domain. It asserts that each signature can be derived from its tensor product with other signatures, or conversely, the problem itself is in FP^NP. We believe that this result is a powerful method for building reductions in complex-valued Holant, as it is also employed as a pivotal technique in the proof of the aforementioned dichotomy in this article.