papers

Commutativity gadgets allow NP-hardness proofs for classical constraint satisfaction problems (CSPs) to be carried over to undecidability proofs for the corresponding entangled CSPs. This has been done, for instance, for NP-complete boolean CSPs and \(3\)-colouring in the work of Culf and Mastel. For many CSPs over larger alphabets, including \(k\)-colouring when \(k ≥4\), it is not known whether or not commutativity gadgets exist, or if the entangled CSP is decidable. In this paper, we study commutativity gadgets and prove the first known obstruction to their existence. We do this by extending the definition of the quantum automorphism group of a graph to the quantum endomorphism monoid of a CSP, and showing that a CSP with non-classical quantum endomorphism monoid does not admit a commutativity gadget. In particular, this shows that no commutativity gadget exists for \(k\)-colouring when \(k ≥4\). However, we construct a commutativity gadget for an alternate way of presenting \(k\)-colouring as a nonlocal game, the oracular setting. Furthermore, we prove an easy to check sufficient condition for the quantum endomorphism monoid to be non-classical, extending a result of Schmidt for the quantum automorphism group of a graph, and use this to give examples of CSPs that do not admit a commutativity gadget. We also show that existence of oracular commutativity gadgets is preserved under categorical powers of graphs; existence of commutativity gadgets and oracular commutativity gadgets is equivalent for graphs with no four-cycle; and that the odd cycles and the odd graphs have a commutative quantum endomorphism monoid, leaving open the possibility that they might admit a commutativity gadget.

We introduce the free inhomogeneous wreath product of compact matrix quantum groups, which generalizes the free wreath product (Bichon 2004). We use this to present a general technique to determine quantum automorphism groups of connected graphs in terms of their maximal biconnected subgraphs, provided that we have sufficient information about their quantum automorphism groups. We show that this requirement is met for outerplanar graphs, leading to algorithms to compute the quantum automorphism groups of these graphs, as well as recovering results for forests and block graphs.

Let \(m\) be a positive integer, \(X\) a graph with vertex set \(Ω\), and \({\rm WL}_m(X)\) the coloring of the Cartesian \(m\)-power \(Ω^m\), obtained by the \(m\)-dimensional Weisfeiler-Leman algorithm. The \({\rm WL}\)-dimension of the graph \(X\) is defined to be the smallest \(m\) for which the coloring \({\rm WL}_m(X)\) determines \(X\) up to isomorphism. It is known that the \({\rm WL}\)-dimension of any planar graph is \(2\) or \(3\), but no planar graph of \({\rm WL}\)-dimension \(3\) is known. We prove that the \({\rm WL}\)-dimension of a polyhedral (i.e., \(3\)-connected planar) graph \(X\) is at most \(2\) if the color classes of the coloring \({\rm WL}_2(X)\) are the orbits of the componentwise action of the group \({\rm Aut}(X)\) on \(Ω^2\).

Mančinska and Roberson [FOCS’20] showed that two graphs are quantum isomorphic if and only if they admit the same number of homomorphisms from any planar graph. Atserias et al. [JCTB’19] proved that quantum isomorphism is undecidable in general, which motivates the study of its relaxations. In the classical setting, Roberson and Seppelt [ICALP’23] characterized the feasibility of each level of the Lasserre hierarchy of semidefinite programming relaxations of graph isomorphism in terms of equality of homomorphism counts from an appropriate graph class. The NPA hierarchy, a noncommutative generalization of the Lasserre hierarchy, provides a sequence of semidefinite programming relaxations for quantum isomorphism. In the quantum setting, we show that the feasibility of each level of the NPA hierarchy for quantum isomorphism is equivalent to equality of homomorphism counts from an appropriate class of planar graphs. Combining this characterization with the convergence of the NPA hierarchy, and noting that the union of these classes is the set of all planar graphs, we obtain a new proof of the result of Mančinska and Roberson [FOCS’20] that avoids the use of quantum groups. Moreover, this homomorphism indistinguishability characterization also yields a randomized polynomial-time algorithm deciding exact feasibility of each fixed level of the NPA hierarchy of SDP relaxations for quantum isomorphism.

Abstract Sabidussi’s theorem [Duke Math. J. 28 (1961), 573–578] gives necessary and sufficient conditions under which the automorphism group of a lexicographic product of two graphs is a wreath product of the respective automorphism groups. We prove a quantum version of Sabidussi’s theorem for finite graphs, with the automorphism groups replaced by quantum automorphism groups and the wreath product replaced by the free wreath product of quantum groups. This extends the result of Chassaniol [J. Algebra 456, 2016, 23–45], who proved it for regular graphs. Moreover, we apply our result to lexicographic products of quantum vertex transitive graphs, determining their quantum automorphism groups even when Sabidussi’s conditions do not apply.

We give a characterisation of quantum automorphism groups of trees. In particular, for every tree, we show how to iteratively construct its quantum automorphism group using free products and free wreath products. This can be considered a quantum version of Jordan’s theorem for the automorphism groups of trees. This is one of the first characterisations of quantum automorphism groups of a natural class of graphs with quantum symmetry.

By a map we mean a 2-cell decomposition of a closed compact surface, i.e., an embedding of a graph such that every face is homeomorphic to an open disc. Automorphism of a map can be thought of as a permutation of the vertices which preserves the vertex-edge-face incidences in the embedding. When the underlying surface is orientable, every automorphism of a map determines an angle-preserving homeomorphism of the surface. While it is conjectured that there is no "truly subquadratic" algorithm for testing map isomorphism for unconstrained genus, we present a linear-time algorithm for computing the generators of the automorphism group of a map, parametrized by the genus of the underlying surface. The algorithm applies a sequence of local reductions and produces a uniform map, while preserving the automorphism group. The automorphism group of the original map can be reconstructed from the automorphism group of the uniform map in linear time. We also extend the algorithm to non-orientable surfaces by making use of the antipodal double-cover.

We investigate automorphism groups of planar graphs. The main result is a complete recursive description of all abstract groups that can be realized as automorphism groups of planar graphs. The characterization is formulated in terms of inhomogeneous wreath products. In the proof, we combine techniques from combinatorics, group theory, and geometry. Our result significantly improves the Babai’s description (1975).