Related papers: Linear cover time is exponentially unlikely

In the present paper we show that for any given digraph $\mathbb{G} =([n], \vec{E})$, i.e. an oriented graph without self-loops and 2-cycles, one can construct a 1-dependent Markov chain and $n$ identically distributed hitting times $T_1,…

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 prove that a simple random walk on quasi-transitive graphs with the volume growth being faster than any polynomial of degree 4 has a.s. infinitely many cut times, and hence infinitely many cutpoints. This confirms a conjecture raised by…

We consider random walks on finite vertex-transitive graphs $\Gamma$ of bounded degree. We find a simple geometric condition which characterises the cover time fluctuations: the suitably normalised cover time converges to a standard Gumbel…

Let G be a countable group which acts by isometries on a separable, but not necessarily proper, Gromov hyperbolic space X. We say the action of G is weakly hyperbolic if G contains two independent hyperbolic isometries. We show that a…

We consider a random walk process which prefers to visit previously unvisited edges, on the random $r$-regular graph $G_r$ for any odd $r\geq 3$. We show that this random walk process has asymptotic vertex and edge cover times…

We construct a bounded degree graph $G$, such that a simple random walk on it is transient but the random walk path (i.e., the subgraph of all the edges the random walk has crossed) has only finitely many cutpoints, almost surely. We also…

We consider large deviations of the cover time of the discrete torus $(\mathbb{Z}/N\mathbb{Z})^d$, $d \geq 3$ by simple random walk. We prove a lower bound on the probability that the cover time is smaller than $\gamma\in (0,1)$ times its…

We start by introducing avoidance coupling of Markov chains, with an overview of existing results. We then introduce and motivate a new notion, uniform avoidance coupling. We show that the only Markovian avoidance coupling on a cycle is of…

We consider the general branching random walk under minimal assumptions, which in particular guarantee that the empirical particle distribution admits an almost sure central limit theorem. For such a process, we study the large time decay…

Let $M_n$ be the number of steps of the loop-erasure of a simple random walk on $\mathbb{Z}^2$ from the origin to the circle of radius $n$. We relate the moments of $M_n$ to $Es(n)$, the probability that a random walk and an independent…

Let $X_n, n \ge 0$ be a Markov chain with finite state space $M$. If $x,y \in M$ such that $x$ is transient we have $P^y(X_n = x) \to 0$ for $n \to \infty$, and under mild aperiodicity conditions this convergence is monotone in that for…

Let $G$ be a Cayley graph of a nonamenable group with spectral radius $\rho < 1$. It is known that branching random walk on $G$ with offspring distribution $\mu$ is transient, i.e., visits the origin at most finitely often almost surely, if…

Using the technique of evolving sets, we explore the connection between entropy growth and transience for simple random walks on connected infinite graphs with bounded degree. In particular we show that for a simple random walk starting at…

The cover time of a finite connected graph is the expected number of steps needed for a simple random walk on the graph to visit all the vertices. It is known that the cover time on any n-vertex, connected graph is at least (1+o(1)) n…

It is shown that transient graphs for the simple random walk do not admit a nearest neighbor transient Markov chain (not necessarily a reversible one), that crosses all edges with positive probability, while there is such chain for the…

We consider a continuous time simple random walk on a subset of the square lattice with wired boundary conditions: the walk transitions at unit edge rate on the graph obtained from the lattice closure of the subset by contracting the…

Given a graph $G=(V,E)$, consider Poisson($ |V|$) walkers performing independent lazy simple random walks on $G$ simultaneously, where the initial position of each walker is chosen independently with probability proportional to the degrees.…

In this paper we study the probability that a $d$ dimensional simple random walk (or the first $L$ steps of it) covers each point in a nearest neighbor path connecting 0 and the boundary of an $L_1$ ball. We show that among all such paths,…

We prove that on any transitive graph $G$ with infinitely many ends, a self-avoiding walk of length $n$ is ballistic with extremely high probability, in the sense that there exist constants $c,t>0$ such that $\mathbb{P}_n(d_G(w_0,w_n)\geq…