Related papers: Shuffling by semi-random transpositions

Consider the interchange process on a connected graph $G=(V,E)$ on $n$ vertices. I.e.\ shuffle a deck of cards by first placing one card at each vertex of $G$ in a fixed order and then at each tick of the clock, picking an edge uniformly at…

We show how to combine Fourier analysis with coupling arguments to bound the mixing times of a variety of Markov chains. The mixing time is the number of steps a Markov chain takes to approach its equilibrium distribution. One application…

Consider a randomly shuffled deck of $2n$ cards with $n$ red cards and $n$ black cards. We study the average number of moves it takes to go from a randomly shuffled deck to a deck that alternates in color by performing the following move:…

In this paper, we investigate the mixing time of the adjacent transposition shuffle for a deck of $N$ cards. We prove that around time $N^2\log N/(2\pi^2)$, the total variation distance to equilibrium of the deck distribution drops abruptly…

We prove an upper bound of $1.5324 n \log n$ for the mixing time of the random-to-random insertion shuffle, improving on the best known upper bound of $2 n \log n$. Our proof is based on the analysis of a non-Markovian coupling.

We study Markov chains which model genome rearrangements. These models are useful for studying the equilibrium distribution of chromosomal lengths, and are used in methods for estimating genomic distances. The primary Markov chain studied…

Establishing cutoff, an abrupt transition from "not mixed" to "well mixed", is a classical topic in the theory of mixing times for Markov chains. Interest has grown recently in determining not only the existence of cutoff and the order of…

The ``overlapping-cycles shuffle'' mixes a deck of $n$ cards by moving either the $n$th card or the $(n-k)$th card to the top of the deck, with probability half each. We determine the spectral gap for the location of a single card, which,…

We introduce a new type of card shuffle called one-sided transpositions. At each step a card is chosen uniformly from the pack and then transposed with another card chosen uniformly from below it. This defines a random walk on the symmetric…

In this paper we study the mixing time of a biased transpositions shuffle on a set of $N$ cards with $N/2$ cards of two types. For a parameter $0<a \le 1$, one type of card is chosen to transpose with a bias of $\frac{a}{N}$ and the other…

We study the Gilbert-Shannon-Reeds model for riffle shuffles and ask 'How many times must a deck of cards be shuffled for the deck to be in close to random order?'. In 1992, Bayer and Diaconis gave a solution which gives exact and…

Consider shuffling a deck of $n$ cards, labeled $1$ through $n$, as follows: at each time step, pick one card uniformly with your right hand and another card, independently and uniformly with your left hand; then swap the cards. How long…

We consider a Markov chain on invertible $n\times n$ matrices with entries in $\mathbb{Z}_2$ which moves by picking an ordered pair of distinct rows and add the first one to the other, modulo $2$. We establish a logarithmic Sobolev…

We prove an $\widetilde O(n^2)$ bound for the relaxation time and the log-Sobolev time (inverse log-Sobolev constant) of the classical triangulation flip chain on a convex $(n+2)$-gon, implying a mixing time of $\widetilde O(n^2)$. The…

We consider a family of card shuffles of $n$ cards in which the allowed moves involve transpositions corresponding to the Jucys--Murphy elements of the symmetric group $\{S_m\}_{m \leq n}$. We determine the eigenvalues of the corresponding…

In card games, in casino games with multiple decks of cards and in cryptography, one is sometimes faced with the following problem: how can a human (as opposed to a computer) shuffle a large deck of cards? The procedure we study is to break…

We provide a general framework for computing upper bounds on mixing times of finite Markov chains when its minimal ideal is left zero. Our analysis is based on combining results by Brown and Diaconis with our previous work on stationary…

Consider a permutation $\sigma\in S_n$ as a deck of cards numbered from 1 to $n$ and laid out in a row, where $\sigma_j$ denotes the number of the card that is in the $j$-th position from the left.\rm\ We study some probabilistic and…

Mixing of finite time-homogeneous Markov chains is well understood nowadays, with a rich set of techniques to estimate their mixing time. In this paper, we study the mixing time of random walks in dynamic random environments. To that end,…

The random transposition shuffle on repeated cards induces a Markov chain on the quotient space of arrangements with multiplicities, and is equivalent to the many-urn mean-field Bernoulli-Laplace model introduced by Scarabotti. Writing…