  Circular coloring is a constraints satisfaction problem where colors are
assigned to nodes in a graph in such a way that every pair of connected nodes
has two consecutive colors (the first color being consecutive to the last). We
study circular coloring of random graphs using the cavity method. We identify
two very interesting properties of this problem. For sufficiently many color
and sufficiently low temperature there is a spontaneous breaking of the
circular symmetry between colors and a phase transition forwards a
ferromagnet-like phase. Our second main result concerns 5-circular coloring of
random 3-regular graphs. While this case is found colorable, we conclude that
the description via one-step replica symmetry breaking is not sufficient. We
observe that simulated annealing is very efficient to find proper colorings for
this case. The 5-circular coloring of 3-regular random graphs thus provides a
first known example of a problem where the ground state energy is known to be
exactly zero yet the space of solutions probably requires a full-step replica
symmetry breaking treatment.
