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Elephant random walk on the infinite dihedral group $\mathbb{Z}_2 * \mathbb{Z}_2$

Probability 2026-04-07 v1 Statistical Mechanics Mathematical Physics math.MP

Abstract

Elephant random walks were studied recently in \cite{mukherjee2025elephant} on the groups Zd1Z2d2\mathbb{Z}^{*d_1} * \mathbb{Z}_2^{*d_2} whose Cayley graphs are infinite dd-regular trees with d=2d1+d2d = 2d_1 + d_2. It was found that for d3d \ge 3, the elephant walk is ballistic with the same asymptotic speed d2d\frac{d - 2}{d} as the simple random walk and the memory parameter appears only in the rate of convergence to the limiting speed. In the d=2d = 2 case, there are two such groups, both having the bi-infinite path as their Cayley graph. For (d1,d2)=(1,0)(d_1, d_2) = (1, 0), the walk is the usual elephant random walk on Z\mathbb{Z}, which exhibits anomalous diffusion. In this article, we study the other case, namely (d1,d2)=(0,2)(d_1, d_2) = (0, 2), which corresponds to the infinite dihedral group DZ2Z2D_\infty \cong \mathbb{Z}_2 * \mathbb{Z}_2. Unlike the classical ERW on Z\mathbb{Z}, which is a time-inhomogeneous Markov chain, the ERW on DD_{\infty} is non-Markovian. We show that the first and second order behaviours of the \emph{signed location} of the walker agree with those of the simple symmetric random walk on Z\mathbb{Z}, with the memory parameter essentially manifesting itself via a lower order correction term that can be written as an explicit functional of the elephant walk on Z\mathbb{Z}. Our result demonstrates that unlike the simple random walk, the elephant walk is sensitive to local algebraic relations. Indeed, although DD_{\infty} is virtually abelian, containing Z\mathbb{Z} as a finite-index subgroup, the involutive nature of its generators effectively neutralises memory, thereby ruling out any potential superdiffusive behaviour, in contrast to the superdiffusion observed on its abelian cousin Z\mathbb{Z}.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2604.04922,
  title  = {Elephant random walk on the infinite dihedral group $\mathbb{Z}_2 * \mathbb{Z}_2$},
  author = {Soumendu Sundar Mukherjee and Himasish Talukdar},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2604.04922},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

21 pages, 2 figures