Statistical-computational gap in multiple Gaussian graph alignment
By: Bertrand Even, Luca Ganassali
Potential Business Impact:
Makes computers solve hard graph puzzles faster.
We investigate the existence of a statistical-computational gap in multiple Gaussian graph alignment. We first generalize a previously established informational threshold from Vassaux and Massoulié (2025) to regimes where the number of observed graphs $p$ may also grow with the number of nodes $n$: when $p \leq O(n/\log(n))$, we recover the results from Vassaux and Massoulié (2025), and $p \geq Ω(n/\log(n))$ corresponds to a regime where the problem is as difficult as aligning one single graph with some unknown "signal" graph. Moreover, when $\log p = ω(\log n)$, the informational thresholds for partial and exact recovery no longer coincide, in contrast to the all-or-nothing phenomenon observed when $\log p=O(\log n)$. Then, we provide the first computational barrier in the low-degree framework for (multiple) Gaussian graph alignment. We prove that when the correlation $ρ$ is less than $1$, up to logarithmic terms, low degree non-trivial estimation fails. Our results suggest that the task of aligning $p$ graphs in polynomial time is as hard as the problem of aligning two graphs in polynomial time, up to logarithmic factors. These results characterize the existence of a statistical-computational gap and provide another example in which polynomial-time algorithms cannot handle complex combinatorial bi-dimensional structures.
Similar Papers
Cluster expansion of the log-likelihood ratio: Optimal detection of planted matchings
Statistics Theory
Finds hidden patterns in connected data.
Asymmetric graph alignment and the phase transition for asymmetric tree correlation testing
Information Theory
Finds matching parts in different computer networks.
Computational and statistical lower bounds for low-rank estimation under general inhomogeneous noise
Statistics Theory
Find hidden patterns even in messy data.