Related papers: Cutoff for random lifts of weighted graphs

We characterize the extremal structure for the exact mixing time for random walks on trees $T_{n,d}$ of order $n$ with diameter $d$. Given a graph $G=(V,E)$, let $H(v,\pi)$ denote the expected length of an optimal stopping rule from vertex…

Consider a system of $K$ particles moving on the vertex set of a finite connected graph with at most one particle per vertex. If there is one, the particle at $x$ chooses one of the $\hbox{deg} (x)$ neighbors of its location uniformly at…

Random walk based distributed algorithms make use of a token that circulates in the system according to a random walk scheme to achieve their goal. To study their efficiency and compare it to one of the deterministic solutions, one is led…

In the Gilbert-Shannon-Reeds shuffle, a deck of $N$ cards is cut into two approximately equal parts which are then riffled uniformly at random. Bayer and Diaconis famously showed that this Markov chain undergoes cutoff in total variation…

We pose a new and intriguing question motivated by distributed computing regarding random walks on graphs: How long does it take for several independent random walks, starting from the same vertex, to cover an entire graph? We study the…

Exponential random graph models have become increasingly important in the study of modern networks ranging from social networks, economic networks, to biological networks. They seek to capture a wide variety of common network tendencies…

We consider a class of strongly edge-reinforced random walks, where the corresponding reinforcement weight function is nondecreasing. It is known, from Limic and Tarr\`{e}s [Ann. Probab. (2007), to appear], that the attracting edge emerges…

Consider random $d$-regular graphs, i.e., random graphs such that there are exactly $d$ edges from each vertex for some $d\ge 3$. We study both the configuration model version of this graph, which has occasional multi-edges and self-loops,…

Consider shuffling a deck of $n$ cards, labeled $1$ through $n$, as follows: at each time step, pick one card uniformly with your right hand and another card, independently and uniformly with your left hand; then swap the cards. How long…

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,…

Activated Random Walk (ARW) is an interacting particle system on the $d$-dimensional lattice $\mathbb{Z}^d$. On a finite subset $V \subset \mathbb{Z}^d$ it defines a Markov chain on $\{0,1\}^V$. We prove that when $V$ is a Euclidean ball…

We consider a directed version of the classical Stochastic Block Model with $m\ge 2$ communities and a parameter $\alpha$ controlling the inter-community connectivity. We show that, depending on the scaling of $\alpha$, the mixing time of…

In this paper, we prove intractability results about sampling from the set of partitions of a planar graph into connected components. Our proofs are motivated by a technique introduced by Jerrum, Valiant, and Vazirani. Moreover, we use…

Discovered in the context of card shuffling by Aldous, Diaconis and Shahshahani, the cutoff phenomenon has since then been established in a variety of Markov chains. However, proving cutoff remains a delicate affair, which requires a…

We consider the problem of sampling from data defined on the nodes of a weighted graph, where the edge weights capture the data correlation structure. As shown recently, using spectral graph theory one can define a cut-off frequency for the…

We study hitting times in simple random walks on graphs, which measure the time required to reach specific target vertices. Our main result establishes a sharp lower bound for the variance of hitting times. For a simple random walk on a…

The Gaussian Free Field (GFF) is a canonical random surface in probability theory generalizing Brownian motion to higher dimensions. In two dimensions, it is critical in several senses, and is expected to be the universal scaling limit of a…

Low-dimensional dynamical systems are fruitful models for mixing in fluid and granular flows. We study a one-dimensional discontinuous dynamical system (termed "cutting and shuffling" of a line segment), and we present a comprehensive…

"Small worlds" are large systems in which any given node has only a few connections to other points, but possessing the property that all pairs of points are connected by a short path, typically logarithmic in the number of nodes. The use…

We study the graph-theoretic properties of the trace of random walks on pseudorandom graphs. We show that for any $\varepsilon>0$, there exists a constant $C$ such that the cover time of an $(n,d,\lambda)$-graph $G$ with $d/\lambda\ge C$ is…