English

A spectral characterization for concentration of the cover time

Probability 2019-12-24 v3

Abstract

We prove that for a sequence of finite vertex-transitive graphs of increasing sizes, the cover times are asymptotically concentrated if and only if the product of the spectral-gap and the expected cover time diverges. In fact, we prove this for general reversible Markov chains under the much weaker assumption (than transitivity) that the maximal hitting time of a state is of the same order as the average hitting time.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1809.00145,
  title  = {A spectral characterization for concentration of the cover time},
  author = {Jonathan Hermon},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1809.00145},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

19 pages. Some typos were fixed in this version