Spectral Duality and Reset-Neutral Distributions in Random Walks with Multi-Site Geometric Resetting
Abstract
We study the gambler's ruin problem for a biased random walk on under multi-site geometric resetting: at each time step, the walker is reset with probability to a random position drawn from a distribution over interior sites. Using renewal theory, we derive an exact closed-form expression for the ruin probability , showing that the effect of is fully encoded in a single scalar quantity, the \emph{coupling constant} . A spectral analysis via Doob symmetrization reveals the structure of this coupling. Our main result is a general criterion -- valid for any absorbed Markov chain admitting a spectral decomposition -- for the existence of a \emph{reset-neutral} distribution such that is independent of . This occurs under a spectral duality condition: there exists an involution on the reset sites and -independent weights such that for all spectral modes . When this condition holds, the invariant value is , the classical ruin probability from the midpoint, independent of the choice of symmetric reset sites or resetting rate. For the biased random walk, the condition reduces to the geometric symmetry . This result holds for any , any number of reset sites , and any bias . Both analytical and Monte Carlo simulations confirm the theory with high precision, including tests of spectrally neutral sites. Numerical results also reveal a phase-like structure in the space of reset distributions, with acting as a separatrix between monotone regimes.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2605.00657,
title = {Spectral Duality and Reset-Neutral Distributions in Random Walks with Multi-Site Geometric Resetting},
author = {Juan Antonio Vega Coso},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2605.00657},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
21 pages, 6 figures, 2 tables