Related papers: Mixing times and moving targets

Several mobile agents, modelled as deterministic automata, navigate in an infinite line in synchronous rounds. All agents start in the same round. In each round, an agent can move to one of the two neighboring nodes, or stay idle. Agents…

A simple lemma bounds $\mathrm{s.d.}(T)/\mathbb{E} T$ for hitting times $T$ in Markov chains with a certain strong monotonicity property. We show how this lemma may be applied to several increasing set-valued processes. Our main result…

We study concurrent stochastic reachability games played on finite graphs. Two players, Max and Min, seek respectively to maximize and minimize the probability of reaching a set of target states. We prove that Max has a memoryless strategy…

A game-theoretic framework for time-inconsistent stopping problems where the time-inconsistency is due to the consideration of a non-linear function of an expected reward is developed. A class of mixed strategy stopping times that allows…

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…

In this paper we study the mixing time of the simple random walk on the giant component of supercritical $d$-dimensional random geometric graphs generated by the unit intensity Poisson Point Process in a $d$-dimensional cube of volume $n$.…

In this paper, we consider two time-inhomogeneous Markov chains $X^{(l)}_t$, $l\in\{1,2\}$, with discrete time on a general state space. We assume the existence of some renewal set $C$ and investigate the time of simultaneous renewal, that…

For Markov jump processes on irreducible networks with finite number of sites, we derive a general and explicit expression of the squared coefficient of variation for the net number of transitions from one site to a connected site in a…

There are several works characterizing the total-variation mixing time of a reversible Markov chain in term of natural probabilistic concepts such as stopping times and hitting times. In contrast, there is no known analog for the $L_{2}$…

For any given vertices $u$ and $v$ in a graph, the hitting time of a random walk on a finite graph is the number of steps it takes for a random walk to reach vertex $v$ starting at vertex $u$. The expected value of the hitting time is the…

The spectral gap $\gamma$ of a finite, ergodic, and reversible Markov chain is an important parameter measuring the asymptotic rate of convergence. In applications, the transition matrix $P$ may be unknown, yet one sample of the chain up to…

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 give a characterization of the relaxation time up to an absolute constant factor, in terms of stationary expected hitting times of large sets. This resolves a conjecture of Aldous and Fill. We give a similar characterization for the…

We construct a new Markov chain Monte Carlo method on finite states with optimal choices of acceptance-rejection ratio functions. We prove that the constructed continuous time Markov jumping process has a global in-time convergence rate in…

We consider the problem of characterising expected hitting times and hitting probabilities for imprecise Markov chains. To this end, we consider three distinct ways in which imprecise Markov chains have been defined in the literature: as…

Markov chains are one of the well-known tools for modeling and analyzing stochastic systems. At the same time, they are used for constructing random walks that can achieve a given stationary distribution. This paper is concerned with…

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…

A 1-2 model configuration is a subset of edges of a hexagonal lattice satisfying the constraint that each vertex is incident to 1 or 2 edges. We introduce Markov chains to sample the 1-2 model configurations on 2D hexagonal lattice and…

In this paper, we extend hitting times for imprecise Markov chains to the framework of weighted imprecise Markov chains (WIMCs), in which each transition is associated with a strictly positive weight encoded by a matrix $W$. Given a convex…

We develop a systematic matrix-analytic approach, based on intertwinings of Markov semigroups, for proving theorems about hitting-time distributions for finite-state Markov chains -- an approach that (sometimes) deepens understanding of the…