Related papers: Markov chains on trees: almost lower and upper dir…

A branching process in a Markovian environment consists of an irreducible Markov chain on a set of "environments" together with an offspring distribution for each environment. At each time step the chain transitions to a new random…

Let $(X_n)_{n \ge 0}$ be an irreducible, aperiodic, homogeneous Markov chain, with state space a totally ordered finite alphabet of size $m$. Using combinatorial constructions and weak invariance principles, we obtain the limiting shape of…

For many Markov chains of practical interest, the invariant distribution is extremely sensitive to perturbations of some entries of the transition matrix, but insensitive to others; we give an example of such a chain, motivated by a problem…

We consider the convergence of a continuous-time Markov chain approximation X^h, h>0, to an R^d-valued Levy process X. The state space of X^h is an equidistant lattice and its Q-matrix is chosen to approximate the generator of X. In…

Inference is typically intractable in high-treewidth undirected graphical models, making maximum likelihood learning a challenge. One way to overcome this is to restrict parameters to a tractable set, most typically the set of…

Self-similar Markov trees constitute a remarkable family of random compact real trees carrying a decoration function that is positive on the skeleton. As the terminology suggests, they are self-similar objects that further satisfy a Markov…

A standard way of justifying that a certain probabilistic property holds in a system is to provide a witnessing subsystem (also called critical subsystem) for the property. Computing minimal witnessing subsystems is NP-hard already for…

The study of Markov processes and broadcasting on trees has deep connections to a variety of areas including statistical physics, graphical models, phylogenetic reconstruction, Markov Chain Monte Carlo, and community detection in random…

Consider a finite irreducible Markov chain with invariant distribution $\pi$. We use the inner product induced by $\pi$ and the associated heat operator to simplify and generalize some results related to graph partitioning and the small-set…

We revisit the classical problem of approximating a stochastic differential equation by a discrete-time and discrete-space Markov chain. Our construction iterates Caratheodory's theorem over time to match the moments of the increments…

Phylogenetic trees constitute an interesting class of objects for stochastic processes due to the non-standard nature of the space they inhabit. In particular, many statistical applications require the construction of Markov processes on…

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…

The purpose of this article is to show how the isotropy subgroup of leaf permutations on binary trees can be used to systematically identify tree-informative invariants relevant to models of phylogenetic evolution. In the quartet case, we…

We consider sequences of tree-valued Markov chains that describe evolving genealogies in Cannings models, and we show their convergence in distribution to tree-valued Fleming-Viot processes. Under the conditions of M\"ohle and Sagitov, this…

We develop a general theory for Markov chains whose transition probabilities are the coefficients of descent operators on combinatorial Hopf algebras. These model the breaking-then-recombining of combinational objects. Examples include the…

We are interested in the local limits of families of random trees that satisfy the Markov branching property, which is fulfilled by a wide range of models. Loosely, this property entails that given the sizes of the sub-trees above the root,…

Let $n \ge 2$ be an integer. In this note, we show that the {\it oriented} transition matrices over the field $\mathcal R$ of all real numbers (over the finite field $\mathcal Z_2$ of two elements respectively) of all continuous {\it vertex…

We study the matrices Q_k of in-forests of a weighted digraph G and their connections with the Laplacian matrix L of G. The (i,j) entry of Q_k is the total weight of spanning converging forests (in-forests) with k arcs such that i belongs…

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…

We consider a large class of piecewise expanding maps T of [0,1] with a neutral fixed point, and their associated Markov chain Y_i whose transition kernel is the Perron-Frobenius operator of T with respect to the absolutely continuous…