Related papers: A curiously slowly mixing Markov chain
The problem of efficiently sampling from a set of(undirected) graphs with a given degree sequence has many applications. One approach to this problem uses a simple Markov chain, which we call the switch chain, to perform the sampling. The…
A Markov chain $X^i$ on a finite state space $S$ has transition matrix $P$ and initial state $i$. We may run the chains $(X^i: i\in S)$ in parallel, while insisting that any two such chains coalesce whenever they are simultaneously at the…
Since 1997 a considerable effort has been spent to study the mixing time of switch Markov chains on the realizations of graphic degree sequences of simple graphs. Several results were proved on rapidly mixing Markov chains on unconstrained,…
We study Markov chains for $\alpha$-orientations of plane graphs, these are orientations where the outdegree of each vertex is prescribed by the value of a given function $\alpha$. The set of $\alpha$-orientations of a plane graph has a…
The preparation of the stationary distribution of irreducible, time-reversible Markov chains is a fundamental building block in many heuristic approaches to algorithmically hard problems. It has been conjectured that quantum analogs of…
Consider a system of \(n\) players in which each initially starts on a different team. At each time step, we select an individual winner and an individual loser randomly and the loser joins the winner's team. The resulting Markov chain and…
We study a natural Markov chain on $\{0,1,\cdots,n\}$ with eigenvectors the Hahn polynomials. This explicit diagonalization makes it possible to get sharp rates of convergence to stationarity. The process, the Burnside process, is a special…
We provide a hybrid method that captures the polynomial speed of convergence and polynomial speed of mixing for Markov processes. The hybrid method that we introduce is based on the coupling technique and renewal theory. We propose to…
We define a Markov process on the partitions of $[n]=\{1,\ldots,n\}$ by drawing a sample in $[n]$ at each time of a Poisson process, by merging blocks that contain one of these points and by leaving all other blocks unchanged. This…
We develop Markov chain mixing time estimates for a class of Markov chains with restricted transitions. We assume transitions may occur along a cycle of $n$ nodes and on $n^\gamma$ additional edges, where $\gamma < 1$. We find that the…
The switch chain is a well-known Markov chain for sampling directed graphs with a given degree sequence. While not ergodic in general, we show that it is ergodic for regular degree sequences. We then prove that the switch chain is rapidly…
Consider a Markov chain with finite state space and suppose you wish to change time replacing the integer step index $n$ with a random counting process $N(t)$. What happens to the mixing time of the Markov chain? We present a partial reply…
A class of examples is constructed to show that for strictly stationary Markov chains that are reversible, the simultaneous mixing rates for the $\rho$-mixing and strong mixing ($\alpha$-mixing) conditions can be fairly arbitrary, within…
It is often possible to speed up the mixing of a Markov chain $\{ X_{t} \}_{t \in \mathbb{N}}$ on a state space $\Omega$ by \textit{lifting}, that is, running a more efficient Markov chain $\{ \hat{X}_{t} \}_{t \in \mathbb{N}}$ on a larger…
We analyze the absolute spectral gap of Markov chains on graphs obtained from a cycle of $n$ vertices and perturbed only at approximately $n^{1/\rho}$ random locations with an appropriate, possibly sparse, interconnection structure.…
The distribution of the "mixing time" or the "time to stationarity" in a discrete time irreducible Markov chain, starting in state i, can be defined as the number of trials to reach a state sampled from the stationary distribution of the…
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…
Suppose X and Y are two independent irreducible Markov chains on n states. We consider the intersection time, which is the first time their trajectories intersect. We show for reversible and lazy chains that the total variation mixing time…
Consider a low temperature stochastic Ising model in the phase coexistence regime with Markov semigroup $P_t$. A fundamental and still largely open problem is the understanding of the long time behavior of $\d_\h P_t$ when the initial…
The mixer chain on a graph G is the following Markov chain. Place tiles on the vertices of G, each tile labeled by its corresponding vertex. A "mixer" moves randomly on the graph, at each step either moving to a randomly chosen neighbor, or…