English

The maximum relaxation time of a random walk

Combinatorics 2019-01-29 v2 Probability

Abstract

We show the minimum spectral gap of the normalized Laplacian over all simple, connected graphs on nn vertices is (1+o(1))54n3(1+o(1))\tfrac{54}{n^3}. This minimum is achieved asymptotically by a double kite graph. Consequently, this leads to sharp upper bounds for the maximum relaxation time of a random walk, settling a conjecture of Aldous and Fill. We also improve an eigenvalue-diameter inequality by giving a new lower bound for the spectral gap of the normalized Laplacian. This eigenvalue lower bound is asymptotically best possible.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1804.05500,
  title  = {The maximum relaxation time of a random walk},
  author = {Sinan G. Aksoy and Fan Chung and Michael Tait and Josh Tobin},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1804.05500},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

This version is updated to address referee comments and will appear in Advances in Applied Mathematics

R2 v1 2026-06-23T01:24:24.565Z