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A discrete-time Markov chain can be transformed into a new Markov chain by looking at its states along iterations of an almost surely finite stopping time. By the optional stopping theorem, any bounded harmonic function with respect to the…
For Markov chains with a partially ordered finite state space we show strong stationary duality under the condition of M\"obius monotonicity of the chain. We show relations of M\"obius monotonicity to other definitions of monotone chains.…
Let $\{Y_i\}_{i=1}^{\infty}$ be a stationary reversible Markov chain with state space $[N]$, let $(X, \| \cdot \|)$ be a real-valued Banach space and let $f_1, \ldots, f_n: [N] \rightarrow X$ be functions with mean $0$ such that $\|f_i(v)\|…
The aim of this note is to present an elementary proof of a variation of Harris' ergodic theorem of Markov chains. This theorem, dating back to the fifties essentially states that a Markov chain is uniquely ergodic if it admits a ``small''…
A sequence of Markov chains is said to exhibit (total variation) cutoff if the convergence to stationarity in total variation distance is abrupt. We consider reversible lazy chains. We prove a necessary and sufficient condition for the…
We propose a new definition of metastability of Markov processes on countable state spaces. We obtain sufficient conditions for a sequence of processes to be metastable. In the reversible case these conditions are expressed in terms of the…
We present a recurrence-transience classification for discrete-time Markov chains on manifolds with negative curvature. Our classification depends only on geometric quantities associated to the increments of the chain, defined via the…
Markov chains are a class of probabilistic models that have achieved widespread application in the quantitative sciences. This is in part due to their versatility, but is compounded by the ease with which they can be probed analytically.…
Consider a parametric statistical model $P(\mathrm{d}x|\theta)$ and an improper prior distribution $\nu(\mathrm{d}\theta)$ that together yield a (proper) formal posterior distribution $Q(\mathrm{d}\theta|x)$. The prior is called strongly…
Understanding and predicting how complex systems respond to external perturbations is a central challenge in nonequilibrium statistical physics. Here we consider continuous-time Markov networks, which we subject to perturbations along a…
In this article we consider the Markovian products of invertible (not necessarily positive) matrices chosen from a strongly irreducible, contracting, finite set of matrices. We construct Markovian transfer operators and prove the spectral…
We study finite-time spectral rigidity in reversible Markov chains via exact spectral relaxation dynamics. While the underlying identities follow classically from self-adjointness on $L^2(\pi)$, organizing the dynamics around the relaxation…
For near-critical, transient Markov chains on the non-negative integers in the Lamperti regime, where the mean drift at $x$ decays as $1/x$ as $x \to \infty$, we quantify degree of transience via existence of moments for conditional return…
We consider a discrete time hidden Markov model where the signal is a stationary Markov chain. When conditioned on the observations, the signal is a Markov chain in a random environment under the conditional measure. It is shown that this…
Given access to a single long trajectory generated by an unknown irreducible Markov chain $M$, we simulate an $\alpha$-lazy version of $M$ which is ergodic. This enables us to generalize recent results on estimation and identity testing…
We propose certain conditions which are sufficient for the functional law of the iterated logarithm (the Strassen invariance principle) for some general class of non-stationary Markov-Feller chains. This class may be briefly specified by…
We investigate the metastable behavior of reversible Markov chains on possibly countable infinite state spaces. Based on a new definition of metastable Markov processes, we compute precisely the mean transition time between metastable sets.…
We prove an upper bound on the total variation mixing time of a finite Markov chain in terms of the absolute spectral gap and the number of elements in the state space. Unlike results requiring reversibility or irreducibility, this bound is…
We derive the first explicit bounds for the spectral gap of a random walk Metropolis algorithm on $R^d$ for any value of the proposal variance, which when scaled appropriately recovers the correct $d^{-1}$ dependence on dimension for…
We consider continuous-time Markov chains on integers which allow transitions to adjacent states only, with alternating rates. We give explicit formulas for probability generating functions, and also for means, variances and state…