Related papers: Mixing on the cycle with constant size perturbatio…

We provide new upper bounds for mixing times of general finite Markov chains. We use these bounds to show that the total variation mixing time is robust under rough isometry for bounded degree graphs that are roughly isometric to trees.

Random walks on expanders play a crucial role in Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithms, derandomization, graph theory, and distributed computing. A desirable property is that they are rapidly mixing, which is equivalent to having a spectral…

We study the rate of convergence of the Markov chain on $S_n$ which starts with a random $(n-k)$-cycle for a fixed $k \geq 1$, followed by random transpositions. The convergence to the stationary distribution turns out to be of order $n$.…

In probability theory, equalities are much less than inequalities. In this paper, we find a series of equalities which characterize the symmetry of the forming times of a family of similar cycles for discrete-time and continuous-time Markov…

We survey existing techniques to bound the mixing time of Markov chains. The mixing time is related to a geometric parameter called conductance which is a measure of edge-expansion. Bounds on conductance are typically obtained by a…

This paper studies Markov chains on the symmetric group $S_n$ where the transition probabilities are given by the Ewens distribution with parameter $\theta>1$. The eigenvalues are identified to be proportional to the content polynomials of…

Consider an n by n array of cards shuffled in the following manner. An element x of the array is chosen uniformly at random; Then with probability 1/2 the rectangle of cards above and to the left of x is rotated 180 degrees, and with…

For a discrete time quantum walk (QW) on the $N$-cycle, allowing for decoherence on the coin, we derive a number of new results, including an explicit formula for the position probability distribution. For a QW of this type, we show that…

Consider the following method of card shuffling. Start with a deck of $N$ cards numbered 1 through N. Fix a parameter $p$ between 0 and 1. In this model a ``shuffle'' consists of uniformly selecting a pair of adjacent cards and then…

Reversibility is a key property of Markov chains, central to algorithms such as Metropolis-Hastings and other MCMC methods. Yet many applications yield non-reversible chains, motivating the problem of approximating them by reversible ones…

The mixing time of an ergodic, reversible Markov chain can be bounded in terms of the eigenvalues of the chain: specifically, the second-largest eigenvalue and the smallest eigenvalue. It has become standard to focus only on the…

Quantum speedup for mixing a Markov chain can be achieved based on the construction of slowly-varying $r$ Markov chains where the initial chain can be easily prepared and the spectral gaps have uniform lower bound. The overall complexity is…

Spectral methods have proven to be a highly effective tool in understanding the intrinsic geometry of a high-dimensional data set $\left\{x_i \right\}_{i=1}^{n} \subset \mathbb{R}^d$. The key ingredient is the construction of a Markov chain…

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…

We study a natural random walk on the $n \times n$ upper triangular matrices, with entries in $\mathbb{Z}/m \mathbb{Z}$, generated by steps which add or subtract a uniformly random row to the row above. We show that the mixing time of this…

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…

A mixing Markov chain is proved to be realized as a random walk in a directed graph subject to a synchronizing road coloring. The result ensures existence of appropriate random mappings in Propp--Wilson's coupling from the past. The proof…

We consider the problem of uniformly generating a spanning tree, of a connected undirected graph. This process is useful to compute statistics, namely for phylogenetic trees. We describe a Markov chain for producing these trees. For cycle…

We consider reparametrizations of Heisenberg nilflows. We show that if a Heisenberg nilflow is uniquely ergodic, all non-trivial time-changes within a dense subspace of smooth time-changes are mixing. Equivalently, in the language of…

Let $G$ be a finite group. The commuting chain on $G$ moves from an element $x$ to $y$ by selecting $y$ uniformly amongst those which commute with $x$. The $t$ step transition probabilities of this chain converge to a distribution uniform…