We study the performance of Markov chains for the $q$-state ferromagnetic Potts model on random regular graphs. It is conjectured that their performance is dictated by metastability phenomena, i.e., the presence of "phases" (clusters) in the sample space where Markov chains with local update rules, such as the Glauber dynamics, are bound to take exponential time to escape. The phases that are believed to drive these metastability phenomena in the case of the Potts model emerge as local, rather than global, maxima of the so-called Bethe functional, and previous approaches of analysing these phases based on optimisation arguments fall short of the task. Our first contribution is to detail the emergence of the metastable phases for the $q$-state Potts model on the $d$-regular random graph for all integers $q,d\geq 3$, and establish that for an interval of temperatures, which is delineated by the uniqueness and a broadcasting threshold on the $d$-regular tree, the two phases coexist. The proofs are based on a conceptual connection between spatial properties and the structure of the Potts distribution on the random regular graph, rather than complicated moment calculations. Based on this new structural understanding of the model, we obtain various algorithmic consequences. We first complement recent fast mixing results for Glauber dynamics by Blanca and Gheissari below the uniqueness threshold, showing an exponential lower bound on the mixing time above the uniqueness threshold. Then, we obtain tight results even for the non-local Swendsen-Wang chain, where we establish slow mixing/metastability for the whole interval of temperatures where the chain is conjectured to mix slowly on the random regular graph. The key is to bound the conductance of the chains using a random graph "planting" argument combined with delicate bounds on random-graph percolation.

The last decade witnessed several pivotal results on random inference problems where the aim is to learn a hidden ground truth from indirect randomised observations; much of this research has been guided by statistical physics intuition. Prominent examples include the stochastic block model, low-density parity check codes or compressed sensing. In all random inference problems studied so far the posterior distribution of the ground truth given the observations appears to enjoy a key property called “strong replica symmetry”. This means that the overlap of the posterior distribution with the ground truth (basically the number of bits that can be learned correctly) concentrates on a deterministic value. Whether this is generally true has been an open question. In this paper we discover an example of an inference problem based on a very simple random matrix over that fails to exhibit strong replica symmetry. Beyond its impact on random inference problems, the random matrix model, reminiscent of the binomial Erdős-Rényi random graph, gives rise to a natural random constraint satisfaction problem related to the intensely studied random k-XORSAT problem.

Tanglegrams are structures consisting of two binary rooted trees with the same number of leaves and a perfect matching between the leaves of the two trees. We say that a tanglegram is planar if it can be drawn in the plane without crossings. Using a blend of combinatorial and analytic techniques, we determine an asymptotic formula for the number of planar tanglegrams with n leaves on each side.