Eulerian orientations and Hadamard codes: A novel connection via counting

Abstract

We discover a novel connection between two classical mathematical notions, Eulerian orientations and Hadamard codes by studying the counting problem of Eulerian orientations (\#EO) with local constraint functions imposed on vertices. We present two special classes of constraint functions and a chain reaction algorithm, and show that the \#EO problem defined by each class alone is polynomial-time solvable by the algorithm. These tractable classes of functions are defined inductively, and quite remarkably the base level of these classes is characterized perfectly by the well-known Hadamard code. Thus, we establish a novel connection between counting Eulerian orientations and coding theory. We also prove a \#P-hardness result for the \#EO problem when constraint functions from the two tractable classes appear together.