Related papers: A technical report on hitting times, mixing and cu…

Let $\{W_t\}_{t=1}^{\infty}$ be a finite state stationary Markov chain, and suppose that $f$ is a real-valued function on the state space. If $f$ is bounded, then Gillman's expander Chernoff bound (1993) provides concentration estimates for…

We study the Glauber dynamics for the Ising model on the complete graph, also known as the Curie-Weiss Model. For beta < 1, we prove that the dynamics exhibits a cut-off: the distance to stationarity drops from near 1 to near 0 in a window…

For many Markov chains of practical interest, the invariant distribution is extremely sensitive to perturbations of some entries of the transition matrix, but insensitive to others; we give an example of such a chain, motivated by a problem…

In the analysis of Markov chains and processes, it is sometimes convenient to replace an unbounded state space with a "truncated" bounded state space. When such a replacement is made, one often wants to know whether the equilibrium behavior…

We study a Markov chain on $\mathbb{R}_+ \times S$, where $\mathbb{R}_+$ is the non-negative real numbers and $S$ is a finite set, in which when the $\mathbb{R}_+$-coordinate is large, the $S$-coordinate of the process is approximately…

Let $X$ be a finite set and let $G$ be a finite group acting on $X$. The group action splits $X$ into disjoint orbits. The Burnside process is a Markov chain on $X$ which has a uniform stationary distribution when the chain is lumped to…

We investigate the sharpness of the spectral profile bound presented by Goel et al. and Chen et al. on the $L^{2}$ mixing time of Markov chains on continuous state spaces. We show that the bound provided by Chen et al. is sharp up to a…

The problem of efficiently sampling from a set of (undirected, or directed) graphs with a given degree sequence has many applications. One approach to this problem uses a simple Markov chain, which we call the switch chain, to perform the…

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…

Various optimality properties of universal sequence predictors based on Bayes-mixtures in general, and Solomonoff's prediction scheme in particular, will be studied. The probability of observing $x_t$ at time $t$, given past observations…

In a series of recent works, Boyd, Diaconis, and their co-authors have introduced a semidefinite programming approach for computing the fastest mixing Markov chain on a graph of allowed transitions, given a target stationary distribution.…

First-passage times are often the most relevant aspect of a complex Markovian network, because they signify when information processing has resulted in a definite decision. Previous studies have shown that for kinetic proofreading networks…

It is natural to expect that nonbacktracking random walk will mix faster than simple random walks, but so far this has only been proved in regular graphs. To analyze typical irregular graphs, let $G$ be a random graph on $n$ vertices with…

In the Fastest Mixing Markov Chain problem, we are given a graph $G = (V, E)$ and desire the discrete-time Markov chain with smallest mixing time $\tau$ subject to having equilibrium distribution uniform on $V$ and non-zero transition…

The problem of estimating an unknown discrete distribution from its samples is a fundamental tenet of statistical learning. Over the past decade, it attracted significant research effort and has been solved for a variety of divergence…

We present a Markov-chain analysis of blockwise-stochastic algorithms for solving partially block-separable optimization problems. Our main contributions to the extensive literature on these methods are statements about the Markov operators…

Computational procedures for the stationary probability distribution, the group inverse of the Markovian kernel and the mean first passage times of an irreducible Markov chain, are developed using perturbations. The derivation of these…

Consider a sequence $(\eta^N(t) :t\ge 0)$ of continuous-time, irreducible Markov chains evolving on a fixed finite set $E$, indexed by a parameter $N$. Denote by $R_N(\eta,\xi)$ the jump rates of the Markov chain $\eta^N_t$, and assume that…

This paper studies a Markov chain for phylogenetic reconstruction which uses a popular transition between tree topologies known as subtree pruning-and-regrafting (SPR). We analyze the Markov chain in the simpler setting that the generating…

We consider finite irreducible Markov chains. It was shown that mean hitting time from one state to another satisfies the triangle inequality. Hence, sum of mean hitting time between couple of states in both directions is a metric on the…