Boltzmann distribution on “short” integer partitions with power parts: Limit laws and sampling

Abstract

The paper is concerned with the asymptotic analysis of a family of Boltzmann (multiplicative) distributions over the set ${\check{\Lambda }}^q$ of strict integer partitions (i.e., with unequal parts) into perfect q-th powers. A combinatorial link is provided via a suitable conditioning by fixing the partition weight (the sum of parts) and length (the number of parts), leading to uniform distribution on the corresponding subspaces of partitions. The Boltzmann measure is calibrated through the hyper-parameters $〈N〉$ and $〈M〉$ controlling the expected weight and length, respectively. We study “short” partitions, where the parameter $〈M〉$ is either fixed or grows slower than for typical partitions in ${\check{\Lambda }}^q$. For this model, we obtain a variety of limit theorems including the asymptotics of the cumulative cardinality in the case of fixed $〈M〉$ and a limit shape result in the case of slow growth of $〈M〉$. In both cases, we also characterize the joint distribution of the weight and length, as well as the growth of the smallest and largest parts. Using these results we construct suitable sampling algorithms and analyze their performance.