Title
Approximating Pairwise Correlations in the Ising Model
Abstract
In the Ising model, we consider the problem of estimating the covariance of the spins at two specified vertices. In the ferromagnetic case, it is easy to obtain an additive approximation to this covariance by repeatedly sampling from the relevant Gibbs distribution. However, we desire a multiplicative approximation, and it is not clear how to achieve this by sampling, given that the covariance can be exponentially small. Our main contribution is a fully polynomial time randomised approximation scheme (FPRAS) for the covariance in the ferromagnetic case. We also show that the restriction to the ferromagnetic case is essential—there is no FPRAS for multiplicatively estimating the covariance of an antiferromagnetic Ising model unless RP = #P. In fact, we show that even determining the sign of the covariance is #P-hard in the antiferromagnetic case.
Year
DOI
Venue
2018
10.1145/3337785
ACM Transactions on Computation Theory
Keywords
Field
DocType
Ising model,Markov chain Monte Carlo
Discrete mathematics,Pairwise comparison,Combinatorics,Ising model,Mathematics
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
11
4
1942-3454
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
0
0.34
0
Authors
2
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
leslie ann goldberg11411125.20
mark jerrum22755564.62