Related papers: On the fastest finite Markov processes
Continuous-time Markov chains are mathematical models that are used to describe the state-evolution of dynamical systems under stochastic uncertainty, and have found widespread applications in various fields. In order to make these models…
Maximum a posteriori (MAP) inference in discrete-valued Markov random fields is a fundamental problem in machine learning that involves identifying the most likely configuration of random variables given a distribution. Due to the…
We consider two important time scales---the Markov and cryptic orders---that monitor how an observer synchronizes to a finitary stochastic process. We show how to compute these orders exactly and that they are most efficiently calculated…
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 $n$…
When two Markov operators commute, it suggests that we can couple two copies of one of the corresponding processes. We explicitly construct a number of couplings of this type for a commuting family of Markov processes on the set of…
We propose a discrete time discrete space Markov chain approximation with a Brownian bridge correction for computing curvilinear boundary crossing probabilities of a general diffusion process on a finite time interval. For broad classes of…
In this work, we consider a finite-state inhomogeneous-time Markov chain whose probabilities of transition from one state to another tend to decrease over time. This can be seen as a cooling of the dynamics of an underlying Markov chain. We…
We show that the convergence of finite state space Markov chains to stationarity can often be considerably speeded up by alternating every step of the chain with a deterministic move. Under fairly general conditions, we show that not only…
We introduce simple conditions ensuring that invariant distributions of a Feller Markov chain on a compact Riemannian manifold are absolutely continuous with a lower semi-continuous, continuous or smooth density with respect to the…
The estimation of absorption time distributions of Markov jump processes is an important task in various branches of statistics and applied probability. While the time-homogeneous case is classic, the time-inhomogeneous case has recently…
The spectral gap $\gamma$ of an 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 a fixed…
We prove that the absolute spectral gap of any monotone Markov chain coincides with its optimal Ollivier-Ricci curvature, where the word `optimal' refers to the choice of the underlying metric. Moreover, we provide a new expression in terms…
Consider a Markov process \omega_t at equilibrium and some event C (a subset of the state-space of the process). A natural measure of correlations in the process is the pairwise correlation \Pr[\omega_0,\omega_t \in C] - \Pr[\omega_0 \in…
We give an example of a transient reversible Markov chain that almost surely has only a finite number of cutpoints. We explain how this is relevant to a conjecture of Diaconis and Freedman and a question of Kaimanovich. We also answer…
We derive explicit upper bounds for the $\bar{d}$-distance between a chain of infinite order and its canonical $k$-steps Markov approximation. Our proof is entirely constructive and involves a "coupling from the past" argument. The new…
Motivated by applications of distributed linear estimation, distributed control and distributed optimization, we consider the question of designing linear iterative algorithms for computing the average of numbers in a network. Specifically,…
As a fundamental thermodynamic principle, speed limits reveal the lower bound of entropy production (EP) required for a system to transition from a given initial state to a final state. While various speed limits have been developed for…
The notion of a successful coupling of Markov processes, based on the idea that both components of the coupled system ``intersect'' in finite time with probability one, is extended to cover situations when the coupling is unnecessarily…
We propose a time-independent Hamiltonian protocol for the reversal of qubit ordering in a chain of $N$ spins. Our protocol has an easily implementable nearest-neighbor, transverse-field Ising model Hamiltonian with time-independent,…
We consider the problem of defining and fitting models of autoregressive time series of probability distributions on a compact interval of $\mathbb{R}$. An order-$1$ autoregressive model in this context is to be understood as a Markov…