Related papers: Markov chain comparison
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…
Let $X_{t}$ and $Y_{t}$ be two Markov chains, on state spaces $\Omega \subset \hat{\Omega}$. In this paper, we discuss how to prove bounds on the spectrum of $X_{t}$ based on bounds on the spectrum of $Y_{t}$. This generalizes work of…
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,…
We analyze a Markov chain, known as the product replacement chain, on the set of generating $n$-tuples of a fixed finite group $G$. We show that as $n \rightarrow \infty$, the total-variation mixing time of the chain has a cutoff at time…
Perturbation analysis of Markov chains provides bounds on the effect that a change in a Markov transition matrix has on the corresponding stationary distribution. This paper compares and analyzes bounds found in the literature for finite…
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,…
In this work, we develop a comparison procedure for the Modified log-Sobolev Inequality (MLSI) constants of two reversible Markov chains on a finite state space. Efficient comparison of the MLSI Dirichlet forms is a well known obstacle in…
We present a Markov chain example where non-reversibility and an added edge jointly improve mixing time: when a random edge is added to a cycle of $n$ vertices and a Markov chain with a drift is introduced, we get mixing time of…
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.
Markov chains are convenient means of generating realizations of networks with a given (joint or otherwise) degree distribution, since they simply require a procedure for rewiring edges. The major challenge is to find the right number of…
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…
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.…
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…
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…
We prove a version of McDiarmid's bounded differences inequality for Markov chains, with constants proportional to the mixing time of the chain. We also show variance bounds and Bernstein-type inequalities for empirical averages of Markov…
The tail chain of a Markov chain can be used to model the dependence between extreme observations. For a positive recurrent Markov chain, the tail chain aids in describing the limit of a sequence of point processes $\{N_n,n\geq1\}$,…
A new approach is developed for evaluating the convergence rate for nonlinear Markov chains (MC) based on the recently developed spectral radius technique of markovian coupling for linear MC and the idea of small nonlinear perturbations of…
Lifted Markov chains are Markov chains on graphs with added local "memory" and can be used to mix towards a target distribution faster than their memoryless counterparts. Upper and lower bounds on the achievable performance have been…
We use coupling to study the time taken until the distribution of a statistic on a Markov chain is close to its stationary distribution. Coupling is a common technique used to obtain upper bounds on mixing times of Markov chains, and we…
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…