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We consider reversible ergodic Markov chains with finite state space, and we introduce a new notion of quasi-stationary distribution that does not require the presence of any absorbing state. In our setting, the hitting time of the…

Probability · Mathematics 2024-10-01 Roberto Fernandez , Francesco Manzo , Matteo Quattropani , Elisabetta Scoppola

The basic question in perturbation analysis of Markov chains is: how do small changes in the transition kernels of Markov chains translate to chains in their stationary distributions? Many papers on the subject have shown, roughly, that the…

Probability · Mathematics 2025-08-13 Na Lin , Yuanyuan Liu , Aaron Smith

We study the following learning problem with dependent data: Observing a trajectory of length $n$ from a stationary Markov chain with $k$ states, the goal is to predict the next state. For $3 \leq k \leq O(\sqrt{n})$, using techniques from…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2022-05-05 Yanjun Han , Soham Jana , Yihong Wu

It is well known that the distributions of hitting times in Markov chains are quite irregular, unless the limit as time tends to infinity is considered. We show that nevertheless for a typical finite irreducible Markov chain and for…

Probability · Mathematics 2012-01-11 Yuri Bakhtin , Leonid Bunimovich

Markov chains are one of the well-known tools for modeling and analyzing stochastic systems. At the same time, they are used for constructing random walks that can achieve a given stationary distribution. This paper is concerned with…

Information Theory · Computer Science 2025-01-07 Saber Jafarizadeh

Given an ergodic finite-state Markov chain, let M_{iw} denote the mean time from i to equilibrium, meaning the expected time, starting from i, to arrive at a state selected randomly according to the equilibrium measure w of the chain. John…

Probability · Mathematics 2009-09-16 Peter G. Doyle

The asymptotic variance is an important criterion to evaluate the performance of Markov chains, especially for the central limit theorems. We give the variational formulas for the asymptotic variance of discrete-time (non-reversible) Markov…

Probability · Mathematics 2020-12-29 Lu-Jing Huang , Yong-Hua Mao

There is a well-established theory linking certain semi-Markov chains and continuous-time random walks to time-fractional equations and anomalous diffusion. In this work, we go beyond the semi-Markov framework by considering some…

Probability · Mathematics 2026-02-27 Lorenzo Facciaroni , Costantino Ricciuti , Enrico Scalas

The recently established spectral Favard theorem for bounded banded matrices admitting a positive bidiagonal factorization is applied to a broader class of Markov chains with bounded banded transition matrices, extending beyond the…

Probability · Mathematics 2026-01-27 Amílcar Branquinho , Ana Foulquié-Moreno , Manuel Mañas

This article shows how coupled Markov chains that meet exactly after a random number of iterations can be used to generate unbiased estimators of the solutions of the Poisson equation. Through this connection, we re-derive known unbiased…

Computation · Statistics 2025-12-10 Randal Douc , Pierre E. Jacob , Anthony Lee , Dootika Vats

The paper studies an improved estimate for the rate of convergence for nonlinear homogeneous discrete-time Markov chains. These processes are nonlinear in terms of the distribution law. Hence, the transition kernels are dependent on the…

Probability · Mathematics 2021-05-21 Aleksandr Shchegolev

An important problem in the implementation of Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithms is to determine the convergence time, or the number of iterations before the chain is close to stationarity. For many Markov chains used in practice this time…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2010-07-02 Nayantara Bhatnagar , Andrej Bogdanov , Elchanan Mossel

Questions are posed regarding the influence that the column sums of the transition probabilities of a stochastic matrix (with row sums all one) have on the stationary distribution, the mean first passage times and the Kemeny constant of the…

Probability · Mathematics 2014-03-05 Jeffrey J. Hunter

We study irreducible time-homogenous Markov chains with finite state space in discrete time. We obtain results on the sensitivity of the stationary distribution and other statistical quantities with respect to perturbations of the…

Probability · Mathematics 2007-05-23 Eilon Solan , Nicolas Vieille

In stochastic models for queues and their networks, random events evolve in time. A process for their backward evolution is referred to as a time reversed process. It is often greatly helpful to view a stochastic model from two different…

Probability · Mathematics 2013-04-30 Masakiyo Miyazawa

We solve an open problem concerning the relaxation time (inverse spectral gap) of the zero range process in $\mathbf {Z}^d/L\mathbf {Z}^d$ with constant rate, proving a tight upper bound of $O((\rho +1)^2L^2)$, where $\rho$ is the density…

Probability · Mathematics 2007-05-23 Ben Morris

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…

Probability · Mathematics 2024-12-11 Sam Olesker-Taylor , Luca Zanetti

We consider the problem of non degenerate in energy metastable states forming a series in the framework of reversible finite state space Markov chains. We assume that starting from the state at higher energy the system necessarily visits…

Mathematical Physics · Physics 2017-05-24 Emilio N. M. Cirillo , Francesca R. Nardi , Cristian Spitoni

We present a general method to derive the metastable behavior of weakly mixing Markov chains. This approach is based on properties of the resolvent equations and can be applied to metastable dynamics which do not satisfy the mixing…

Probability · Mathematics 2024-06-21 Claudio Landim , Diego Marcondes , Insuk Seo

We establish an abstract, effective, exponential large deviations type estimate for Markov systems satisfying a weaker form of mixing. We employ this result to derive such estimates, as well as a central limit theorem, for the skew product…

Dynamical Systems · Mathematics 2025-07-17 Ao Cai , Pedro Duarte , Silvius Klein