How fast does a random walk cover a torus?
Abstract
We present high statistics simulation data for the average time that a random walk needs to cover completely a 2-dimensional torus of size . They confirm the mathematical prediction that for large , but the prefactor {\it seems} to deviate significantly from the supposedly exact result derived by A. Dembo {\it et al.}, Ann. Math. {\bf 160}, 433 (2004), if the most straightforward extrapolation is used. On the other hand, we find that this scaling does hold for the time at which the average number of yet unvisited sites is 1, as also predicted previously. This might suggest (wrongly) that and scale differently, although the distribution of rescaled cover times becomes sharp in the limit . But our results can be reconciled with those of Dembo {\it et al.} by a very slow and {\it non-monotonic} convergence of , as had been indeed proven by Belius {\it et al.} [Prob. Theory \& Related Fields {\bf 167}, 1 (2014)] for Brownian walks, and was conjectured by them to hold also for lattice walks.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1704.05039,
title = {How fast does a random walk cover a torus?},
author = {Peter Grassberger},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1704.05039},
year = {2017}
}
Comments
4 pages, 9 figures; to be published in Phys. Rev. E