English

Reversibility of the non-backtracking random walk

Probability 2019-12-24 v2

Abstract

Let GG be a connected graph of uniformly bounded degree. A kk non-backtracking random walk (kk-NBRW) (Xn)n=0(X_n)_{n =0}^{\infty} on GG evolves according to the following rule: Given (Xn)n=0s (X_n)_{n =0}^{s}, at time s+1s+1 the walk picks at random some edge which is incident to XsX_s that was not crossed in the last kk steps and moves to its other end-point. If no such edge exists then it makes a simple random walk step. Assume that for some R>0R>0 every ball of radius RR in GG contains a simple cycle of length at least kk. We show that under some "nice" random time change the kk-NBRW becomes reversible. This is used to prove that it is recurrent iff the simple random walk is.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1707.01601,
  title  = {Reversibility of the non-backtracking random walk},
  author = {Jonathan Hermon},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1707.01601},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

34 pages. Some proofs that were previously omitted were added

R2 v1 2026-06-22T20:39:11.249Z