Probabilistic analysis of the number partitioning problem

Abstract

Given a sequence of $N$ positive real numbers ${a_1,a_2,..., a_N }$, the number partitioning problem consists of partitioning them into two sets such that the absolute value of the difference of the sums of $a_j$ over the two sets is minimized. In the case that the $a_j$'s are statistically independent random variables uniformly distributed in the unit interval, this NP-complete problem is equivalent to the problem of finding the ground state of an infinite-range, random anti-ferromagnetic Ising model. We employ the annealed approximation to derive analytical lower bounds to the average value of the difference for the best constrained and unconstrained partitions in the large $N$ limit. Furthermore, we calculate analytically the fraction of metastable states, i.e. states that are stable against all single spin flips, and found that it vanishes like $N^{-3/2}$.