English

Markov chains conditioned never to wait too long at the origin

Probability 2009-06-23 v1

Abstract

Motivated by Feller's coin-tossing problem, we consider the problem of conditioning an irreducible Markov chain never to wait too long at 0. Denoting by τ\tau the first time that the chain, XX, waits for at least one unit of time at the origin, we consider conditioning the chain on the event (τ>T)(\tau>T). We show there is a weak limit as TT\to \infty in the cases where either the statespace is finite or XX is transient. We give sufficient conditions for the existence of a weak limit in other cases and show that we have vague convergence to a defective limit if the time to hit zero has a lighter tail than τ\tau and τ\tau is subexponential.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0906.3876,
  title  = {Markov chains conditioned never to wait too long at the origin},
  author = {Saul Jacka},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0906.3876},
  year   = {2009}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-21T13:16:02.807Z