English

How long does it take an Elephant Random Walk to forget its training

Probability 2025-09-19 v1

Abstract

We study how conditioning affects the long-term behavior of the Elephant Random Walk, focusing on its first return to the origin, namely, the time it takes to forget the training. When the walker is conditioned to be at position nn at time nn, this return time scales as n(44p)/(34p)n^{(4-4p)/(3-4p)} in the diffusive regime, and grows exponentially in the critical regime.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2509.15049,
  title  = {How long does it take an Elephant Random Walk to forget its training},
  author = {Zheng Fang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2509.15049},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

14 pages, 1 figure. Comments are welcome

R2 v1 2026-07-01T05:44:06.461Z