Related papers: Broder's Chain Is Not Rapidly Mixing

Markov chains are an important tool for modelling and evaluating systems in computer science, economics, biology and numerous other fields. Thus, approximating Markov chains is a useful tool for decreasing the computational effort needed…

We prove that any Markov chain that performs local, reversible updates on randomly chosen vertices of a bounded-degree graph necessarily has mixing time at least $\Omega(n\log n)$, where $n$ is the number of vertices. Our bound applies to…

We prove a Chernoff-type bound for sums of matrix-valued random variables sampled via a regular (aperiodic and irreducible) finite Markov chain. Specially, consider a random walk on a regular Markov chain and a Hermitian matrix-valued…

We consider Markovian models on graphs with local dynamics. We show that, under suitable conditions, such Markov chains exhibit both rapid convergence to equilibrium and strong concentration of measure in the stationary distribution. We…

Perfect sampling is a technique that uses coupling arguments to provide a sample from the stationary distribution of a Markov chain in a finite time without ever computing the distribution. This technique is very efficient if all the events…

Gibbs sampling on factor graphs is a widely used inference technique, which often produces good empirical results. Theoretical guarantees for its performance are weak: even for tree structured graphs, the mixing time of Gibbs may be…

Gibbs sampling is a Markov chain Monte Carlo technique commonly used for estimating marginal distributions. To speed up Gibbs sampling, there has recently been interest in parallelizing it by executing asynchronously. While empirical…

The convergence rate of a Markov chain to its stationary distribution is typically assessed using the concept of total variation mixing time. However, this worst-case measure often yields pessimistic estimates and is challenging to infer…

We study the approximation of a Markov chain on a reduced state space, for both discrete- and continuous-time Markov chains. In this context, we extend the existing theory of formal error bounds for the approximated transient distributions.…

We investigate absorption, i.e., almost sure convergence to an absorbing state, in time-varying (non-homogeneous) discrete-time Markov chains with finite state space. We consider systems that can switch among a finite set of transition…

Establishing cutoff, an abrupt transition from "not mixed" to "well mixed", is a classical topic in the theory of mixing times for Markov chains. Interest has grown recently in determining not only the existence of cutoff and the order of…

We use coupling to study the time taken until the distribution of a statistic on a Markov chain is close to its stationary distribution. Coupling is a common technique used to obtain upper bounds on mixing times of Markov chains, and we…

We provide quantitative upper bounds on the total variation mixing time of the Markov chain corresponding to the unadjusted Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (uHMC) algorithm. For two general classes of models and fixed time discretization step size…

Slow mixing is the central hurdle when working with Markov chains, especially those used for Monte Carlo approximations (MCMC). In many applications, it is only of interest to estimate the stationary expectations of a small set of…

By proving a local limit theorem for higher-order transitions, we determine the time required for necklace chains to be close to stationarity. Because necklace chains, built by arranging identical smaller chains around a directed cycle, are…

In this paper we consider the field of local times of a discrete-time Markov chain on a general state space, and obtain uniform (in time) upper bounds on the total variation distance between this field and the one of a sequence of $n$…

We consider Markov chains which are polynomially mixing, in a weak sense expressed in terms of the space of functions on which the mixing speed is controlled. In this context, we prove polynomial large and moderate deviations inequalities.…

Improved rates of convergence for ergodic homogeneous Markov chains are studied. In comparison to the earlier papers the setting is also generalised to the case without a unique dominated measure. Examples are provided where the new bound…

We consider the problem of sampling a proper $k$-coloring of a graph of maximal degree $\Delta$ uniformly at random. We describe a new Markov chain for sampling colorings, and show that it mixes rapidly on graphs of bounded treewidth if…

We prove rapid mixing for certain Markov chains on the set $S_n$ of permutations on $1,2,\dots,n$ in which adjacent transpositions are made with probabilities that depend on the items being transposed. Typically, when in state $\sigma$, a…