Related papers: Linear Cover Time is Exponentially Unlikely

It is a fact simple to establish that the mixing time of the simple random walk on a d-regular graph $G_n$ with n vertices is asymptotically bounded from below by $d/ ((d-2)\log (d-1))\log n$. Such a bound is obtained by comparing the walk…

We introduce a new technique for bounding the cover time of random walks by relating it to the runtime of randomized broadcast. In particular, we strongly confirm for dense graphs the intuition of Chandra et al. \cite{CRRST97} that "the…

An $n$-tuple $D=(d(1),\dots,d(n))$ is a \emph{feasible degree sequence} if there is a graph on $\{1,\dots,n\}$ such that $i$ has degree $d(i)$. Any such graph will have $m=\sum_{i=1}^n d(i)/2$ edges. Letting $G(D)$ be a graph chosen…

Using the technique of evolving sets, we explore the connection between entropy growth and transience for simple random walks on connected infinite graphs with bounded degree. In particular we show that for a simple random walk starting at…

We consider large deviations of the cover time of the discrete torus $(\mathbb{Z}/N\mathbb{Z})^d$, $d \geq 3$ by simple random walk. We prove a lower bound on the probability that the cover time is smaller than $\gamma\in (0,1)$ times its…

For a graph $G$ on $n$ vertices, naively sampling the position of a random walk of at time $t$ requires work $\Omega(t)$. We desire local access algorithms supporting $\text{position}(G,s,t)$ queries, which return the position of a random…

We study properties of a simple random walk on the random digraph D_{n,p} when np={d\log n},\; d>1. We prove that whp the stationary probability pi_v of a vertex v is asymptotic to deg^-(v)/m where deg^-(v) is the in-degree of v and…

Consider a discrete-time simple random walk $(X_t)_{t\ge 0}$ on an infinite, connected, locally finite graph $G$. Let $R_t := |\{X_0,\dots,X_t\}|$ denote its range at time $t$, and $T_n:=\inf\{t\ge 0: R_t= n\}$ the $n-$th discovery time. We…

We consider the general branching random walk under minimal assumptions, which in particular guarantee that the empirical particle distribution admits an almost sure central limit theorem. For such a process, we study the large time decay…

Maximization of the entropy rate is an important issue to design diffusion processes aiming at a well-mixed state. We demonstrate that it is possible to construct maximal-entropy random walks with only local information on the graph…

We obtain upper bounds (in most cases, sharp) for the hitting times of random walks on finite undirected graphs expressed as functions of the graph's number of edges. In particular, we show that the maximum hitting time for a simple random…

We derive asymptotics for the probability of the origin to be an extremal point of a random walk in R^n. We show that in order for the probability to be roughly 1/2, the number of steps of the random walk should be between e^{c n / log n}$…

We prove that a simple random walk on quasi-transitive graphs with the volume growth being faster than any polynomial of degree 4 has a.s. infinitely many cut times, and hence infinitely many cutpoints. This confirms a conjecture raised by…

It is shown that the path of a simple random walk on any graph, consisting of all vertices visited and edges crossed by the walk, is almost surely a recurrent subgraph.

The rotor walk on a graph is a deterministic analogue of random walk. Each vertex is equipped with a rotor, which routes the walker to the neighbouring vertices in a fixed cyclic order on successive visits. We consider rotor walk on an…

We apply the power-of-two-choices paradigm to a random walk on a graph: rather than moving to a uniform random neighbour at each step, a controller is allowed to choose from two independent uniform random neighbours. We prove that this…

We give sharp, uniform estimates for the probability that a random walk of n steps on the reals avoids a half-line [y,infinity) given that it ends at the point x. The estimates hold for general continuous or lattice distributions provided…

We consider the range of random walks up to time n, R_n, on graphs satisfying a uniform condition. This condition is characterized by potential theory. Not only all vertex transitive graphs but also many non-regular graphs satisfy the…

The cover time is defined as the time needed for a random walker to visit every site of a confined domain. Here, we focus on persistent random walks, which provide a minimal model of random walks with short range memory. We derive the exact…

In this paper, we construct a natural probability measure on the space of real branched coverings from a real projective algebraic curve $(X,c_X)$ to the projective line $(\mathbb{C}\mathbb{P}^1,\textrm{conj})$. We prove that the space of…