The Complexity of Counting Eulerian Tours in 4-Regular Graphs

Abstract: We investigate the complexity of counting Eulerian tours ({\sc #ET}) and its variations from two perspectives---the complexity of exact counting and the complexity w.r.t. approximation-preserving reductions (AP-reductions \cite{MR2044886}). We prove that {\sc #ET} is #P-complete even for planar 4-regular graphs. A closely related problem is that of counting A-trails ({\sc #A-trails}) in graphs with rotational embedding schemes (so called maps). Kotzig \cite{MR0248043} showed that {\sc #A-trails} can be computed in polynomial time for 4-regular plane graphs (embedding in the plane is equivalent to giving a rotational embedding scheme). We show that for 4-regular maps the problem is #P-hard. Moreover, we show that from the approximation viewpoint {\sc #A-trails} in 4-regular maps captures the essence of {\sc #ET}, that is, we give an AP-reduction from {\sc #ET} in general graphs to {\sc #A-trails} in 4-regular maps. The reduction uses a fast mixing result for a card shuffling problem \cite{MR2023023}. In order to understand whether #{\sc A-trails} in 4-regular maps can AP-reduce to #{\sc ET} in 4-regular graphs, we investigate a problem in which transitions in vertices are weighted (this generalizes both #{\sc A-trails} and #{\sc ET}). In the 4-regular case we show that {\sc A-trails} can be used to simulate any vertex weights and provide evidence that {\sc ET} can simulate only a limited set of vertex weights.