The Widom-Rowlinson model, the hard-core model and the extremality of the complete graph

Abstract

Let $H_{\mathrm{WR}}$ be the path on $3$ vertices with a loop at each vertex. D. Galvin conjectured, and E. Cohen, W. Perkins and P. Tetali proved that for any $d$-regular simple graph $G$ on $n$ vertices we have $$\hom(G,H_{\mathrm{WR}})\leq \hom(K_{d+1},H_{\mathrm{WR}})^{n/(d+1)}.$$ In this paper we give a short proof of this theorem together with the proof of a conjecture of Cohen, Perkins and Tetali. Our main tool is a simple bijection between the Widom-Rowlinson model and the hard-core model on another graph. We also give a large class of graphs $H$ for which we have $$\hom(G,H)\leq \hom(K_{d+1},H)^{n/(d+1)}.$$ In particular, we show that the above inequality holds if $H$ is a path or a cycle of even length at least $6$ with loops at every vertex.