Related papers: Randomized Interior Point methods for Sampling and…

The random walk with choice is a well known variation to the random walk that first selects a subset of $d$ neighbours nodes and then decides to move to the node which maximizes the value of a certain metric; this metric captures the number…

In this article, we study a branching random walk in an environment which depends on the time. This time-inhomogeneous environment consists of a sequence of macroscopic time intervals, in each of which the law of reproduction remains…

The mixer chain on a graph G is the following Markov chain. Place tiles on the vertices of G, each tile labeled by its corresponding vertex. A "mixer" moves randomly on the graph, at each step either moving to a randomly chosen neighbor, or…

This thesis is devoted to the study of extreme value statistics in stochastic processes and their applications. In the first part, we obtain exact analytical results on the extreme value statistics of both discrete-time and continuous-time…

We propose a numerical method to approximate the value function for the optimal stopping problem of a piecewise deterministic Markov process (PDMP). Our approach is based on quantization of the post jump location---inter-arrival time Markov…

Let $P$ be an irreducible and reversible transition matrix on a finite state space $V$ with invariant distribution $\pi$. We let $k$ chains start by choosing independent locations distributed according to $\pi$ and then they evolve…

We consider Random Walk in Random Scenery, denoted $X_n$, where the random walk is symmetric on $Z^d$, with $d>4$, and the random field is made up of i.i.d random variables with a stretched exponential tail decay, with exponent $\alpha$…

Many classical randomized algorithms (e.g., approximation algorithms for #P-complete problems) utilize the following random walk algorithm for {\em almost uniform sampling} from a state space $S$ of cardinality $N$: run a symmetric ergodic…

The involution walk is the random walk on $S_n$ generated by involutions with a binomially distributed with parameter $1-p$ number of $2$-cycles. This is a parallelization of the transposition walk. The involution walk is shown in this…

The aim of this work is to study the convergence to equilibrium of an $(h,\rho)$-subelliptic random walk on a closed, connected Riemannian manifold $(M,g)$ associated with a subelliptic second-order differential operator $A$ on $M$. In such…

We develop sampling methods, which consist of Gaussian invariant versions of random walk Metropolis (RWM), Metropolis adjusted Langevin algorithm (MALA) and second order Hessian or Manifold MALA. Unlike standard RWM and MALA we show that…

We consider the computational task of sampling a bit string $x$ from a distribution $\pi(x)=|\langle x|\psi\rangle|^2$, where $\psi$ is the unique ground state of a local Hamiltonian $H$. Our main result describes a direct link between the…

We consider Markov chains on general state spaces in stationary random environment which are defined by a random mapping that is contractive up to a bounded perturbation. We prove their convergence to a limiting law, providing convergence…

The branching rule is one of the most fundamental properties of the Macdonald symmetric polynomials. It expresses a Macdonald polynomial as a nonnegative linear combination of Macdonald polynomials with smaller number of variables. Taking a…

We study asymptotic properties of spatially non-homogeneous random walks with non-integrable increments, including transience, almost-sure bounds, and existence and non-existence of moments for first-passage and last-exit times. In our…

We consider a random walk on Z^d in an i.i.d. balanced random environment, that is a random walk for which the probability to jump from x to nearest neighbor x+e is the same as to nearest neighbor x-e. Assuming that the environment is…

We study a general class of random walks driven by a uniquely ergodic Markovian environment. Under a coupling condition on the environment we obtain strong ergodicity properties for the environment as seen from the position of the walker,…

This paper studies a large number of homogeneous Markov decision processes where the transition probabilities and costs are coupled in the empirical distribution of states (also called mean-field). The state of each process is not known to…

Define $(X_n)$ on $\mathbf{Z}/q\mathbf{Z}$ by $X_{n+1} = 2X_n + b_n$, where the steps $b_n$ are chosen independently at random from $-1, 0, +1$. The mixing time of this random walk is known to be at most $1.02 \log_2 q$ for almost all odd…

A measure on a locally compact group is called spread out if one of its convolution powers is not singular with respect to Haar measure. Using Markov chain theory, we conduct a detailed analysis of random walks on homogeneous spaces with…