Tata Institute of Fundamental Research

Counting in constrained worlds and the Fibonacci Trick

STCS Student Seminar
Speaker: Aindrila Rakshit (TIFR)
Organiser: Ashutosh Shankar
Date: Friday, 1 Aug 2025, 16:00 to 17:00
Venue: A-201 (STCS Seminar Room)

(Scan to add to calendar)
Abstract: 

Many graph-theoretic counting problems remain intractable (indeed #P-complete) despite additional constraints on their structural properties, like planarity, bipartiteness, and low degree, even though their decision counterparts might be easy. This talk explores Salil Vadhan’s framework for proving #P-completeness of problems like #Matchings, #VertexCovers, and #Monotone2CNF even on planar, low-degree, and regular graphs. A new interpolation based reduction technique that uses Fibonacci-style gadgets to preserve structure like constant degree, during reductions is used to prove these results. Based on: The Complexity of Counting in Sparse, Regular, and Planar Graphs, Salil P. Vadhan (https://doi.org/10.1137/S0097539797321602).