English

How long does it take to catch a wild kangaroo?

Probability 2010-11-09 v2 Number Theory

Abstract

We develop probabilistic tools for upper and lower bounding the expected time until two independent random walks on \ZZ\ZZ intersect each other. This leads to the first sharp analysis of a non-trivial Birthday attack, proving that Pollard's Kangaroo method solves the discrete logarithm problem gx=hg^x=h on a cyclic group in expected time (2+o(1))ba(2+o(1))\sqrt{b-a} for an average xuar[a,b]x\in_{uar}[a,b]. Our methods also resolve a conjecture of Pollard's, by showing that the same bound holds when step sizes are generalized from powers of 2 to powers of any fixed nn.

Cite

@article{arxiv.0812.0789,
  title  = {How long does it take to catch a wild kangaroo?},
  author = {Ravi Montenegro and Prasad Tetali},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0812.0789},
  year   = {2010}
}

Comments

Journal version: 15 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-21T11:48:04.377Z