Sampling List Packings

We study the problem of approximately counting the number of list packings of a graph. The analogous problem for usual vertex coloring and list coloring has attracted a lot of attention. For list packing the setup is similar but we seek a full decomposition of the lists of colors into pairwise-disjoint proper list colorings. In particular, the existence of a list packing implies the existence of a list coloring. Recent works on list packing have focused on existence or extremal results of on the number of list packings, but here we turn to the algorithmic aspects of counting. In graphs of maximum degree $Δ$ and when the number of colors is at least $Ω(Δ^2)$, we give an FPRAS based on rapid mixing of a natural Markov chain (the Glauber dynamics) which we analyze with the path coupling technique. Some motivation for our work is the investigation of an atypical spin system, one where the number of spins for each vertex is much larger than the graph degree.