Faster algorithms for the alignment of sparse correlated Erd\"os-R\'enyi random graphs

TL;DR

This paper introduces faster algorithms for aligning sparse correlated Erd"os-Rényi graphs, improving computational efficiency while maintaining accuracy, and explores phase transitions related to Otter's constant in the large degree limit.

Contribution

The authors propose a new family of algorithms that are faster than previous methods for graph alignment in correlated Erd"os-Rényi graphs, with minimal accuracy loss.

Findings

Algorithms are faster with only slight accuracy reduction.

Numerical simulations support the effectiveness of the new algorithms.

Conjecture of phase transitions at modified Otter's thresholds in large degree limit.

Abstract

The correlated Erd\"os-R\'enyi random graph ensemble is a probability law on pairs of graphs with $n$ vertices, parametrized by their average degree $\lambda$ and their correlation coefficient $s$. It can be used as a benchmark for the graph alignment problem, in which the labels of the vertices of one of the graphs are reshuffled by an unknown permutation; the goal is to infer this permutation and thus properly match the pairs of vertices in both graphs. A series of recent works has unveiled the role of Otter's constant $\alpha$ (that controls the exponential rate of growth of the number of unlabeled rooted trees as a function of their sizes) in this problem: for $s>\sqrt{\alpha}$ and $\lambda$ large enough it is possible to recover in a time polynomial in $n$ a positive fraction of the hidden permutation. The exponent of this polynomial growth is however quite large and depends on the other parameters, which limits the range of applications of the algorithm. In this work we present a family of faster algorithms for this task, show through numerical simulations that their accuracy is only slightly reduced with respect to the original one, and conjecture that they undergo, in the large $\lambda$ limit, phase transitions at modified Otter's thresholds $\sqrt{\widehat{\alpha}}>\sqrt{\alpha}$, with $\widehat{\alpha}$ related to the enumeration of a restricted family of trees.