Related papers: Mixing times of lozenge tiling and card shuffling …

In the cyclic-to-random shuffle, we are given n cards arranged in a circle. At step k, we exchange the k'th card along the circle with a uniformly chosen random card. The problem of determining the mixing time of the cyclic-to-random…

In a series of recent works, Boyd, Diaconis, and their co-authors have introduced a semidefinite programming approach for computing the fastest mixing Markov chain on a graph of allowed transitions, given a target stationary distribution.…

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 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…

We establish the first polynomial upper bound for the mixing time of random edge flips on rooted quadrangulations: we show that the spectral gap of the edge flip Markov chain on quadrangulations with $n$ faces admits, up to constants, an…

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…

This is an expository paper, focussing on the following scenario. We have two Markov chains, $\mathcal {M}$ and $\mathcal {M}'$. By some means, we have obtained a bound on the mixing time of $\mathcal {M}'$. We wish to compare $\mathcal…

The convergence rate of a Markov chain to its stationary distribution is typically assessed using the concept of total variation mixing time. However, this worst-case measure often yields pessimistic estimates and is challenging to infer…

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…

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…

The best known lower and upper bounds on the mixing time for the random-to-random insertions shuffle are $(1/2-o(1))n\log n$ and $(2+o(1))n\log n$. A long standing open problem is to prove that the mixing time exhibits a cutoff. In…

Let 0<\alpha<1/2. We show that the mixing time of a continuous-time reversible Markov chain on a finite state space is about as large as the largest expected hitting time of a subset of stationary measure at least \alpha of the state space.…

A 1-2 model configuration is a subset of edges of a hexagonal lattice satisfying the constraint that each vertex is incident to 1 or 2 edges. We introduce Markov chains to sample the 1-2 model configurations on 2D hexagonal lattice and…

Recently Wilson [Ann. Appl. Probab. 14 (2004) 274--325] introduced an important new technique for lower bounding the mixing time of a Markov chain. In this paper we extend Wilson's technique to find lower bounds of the correct order for…

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…

This article provides the first procedure for computing a fully data-dependent interval that traps the mixing time $t_{\text{mix}}$ of a finite reversible ergodic Markov chain at a prescribed confidence level. The interval is computed from…

We give a bound on the mixing time of a uniformly ergodic, reversible Markov chain in terms of the spectral radius of the transition operator. This bound has been established previously in finite state spaces, and is widely believed to hold…

On complete, non-compact manifolds and infinite graphs, Faber-Krahn inequalities have been used to estimate the rate of decay of the heat kernel. We develop this technique in the setting of finite Markov chains, proving upper and lower…

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…

In this paper, we study the mixing time of Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) for integer least-square (LS) optimization problems. It is found that the mixing time of MCMC for integer LS problems depends on the structure of the underlying…