Related papers: Walks on groups, counting reducible matrices, poly…

The main aim of the present set of notes is to give new, short and essentially self-contained proofs of some classical, as well as more recent, results about random walks on groups. For instance, we shall see that the drift characterization…

In this paper we study the common distance between points and the behavior of a constant length step discrete random walk on finite area hyperbolic surfaces. We show that if the second smallest eigenvalue of the Laplacian is at least 1/4,…

We show that uniform lattices in some semi-simple groups (notably complex ones) admit Anosov surface subgroups. This result has a quantitative version: we introduce a notion, called $K$-Sullivan maps, which generalizes the notion of…

A subset of a group is characteristic if it is invariant under every automorphism of the group. We study word length in fundamental groups of closed hyperbolic surfaces with respect to characteristic generating sets consisting of a finite…

We establish vanishing results for limits of characters in various discrete groups, most notably irreducible lattices in higher rank semisimple Lie groups. As an application, we show that any sequence of finite-dimensional representations…

Let G be a free product of a finite family of finite groups, with the set of generators being formed by the union of the finite groups. We consider a transient nearest-neighbour random walk on G. We give a new proof of the fact that the…

We establish spectral theorems for random walks on mapping class groups of connected, closed, oriented, hyperbolic surfaces, and on $\text{Out}(F_N)$. In both cases, we relate the asymptotics of the stretching factor of the…

Applying E. Kowalski's recent generalization of the large sieve we prove that certain properties expected to be typical (irreducibility of the characteristic polynomial, absence of squares among the matrix coefficients...) are indeed…

We prove existence of asymptotic entropy of random walks on regular languages over a finite alphabet and we give formulas for it. Furthermore, we show that the entropy varies real-analytically in terms of probability measures of constant…

In random walk theory, it is customary to assume that a given walk is irreducible and/or aperiodic. While these prevailing assumptions make particularly tractable the analysis of random walks and help to highlight their diffusive nature,…

An arbitrary homomorphism between groups is nonincreasing for stable commutator length, and there are infinitely many (injective) homomorphisms between free groups which strictly decrease the stable commutator length of some elements.…

We analyze random walks on a class of semigroups called ``left-regular bands''. These walks include the hyperplane chamber walks of Bidigare, Hanlon, and Rockmore. Using methods of ring theory, we show that the transition matrices are…

In this paper we consider an irreducible random walk on the integer lattice $\mathbb{Z}$ that is in the domain of normal attraction of a strictly stable process with index $\alpha\in (1, 2)$ and obtain the asymptotic form of the…

We discuss some recent results by a number of authors regarding word maps on algebraic groups and finite simple groups, their mixing properties and the geometry of their fibers, emphasizing the role played by equidistribution results in…

Given two automorphisms of a group $G$, one is interested in knowing whether they are conjugate in the automorphism group of $G$, or in the abstract commensurator of $G$, and how these two properties may differ. When $G$ is the fundamental…

The Poisson boundary of a finite direct product of affine automorphism groups of homogeneous trees is considered. The Poisson boundary is shown to be a product of ends of trees with a hitting measure for spread-out, aperiodic measures of…

Given any generating set of any pseudo-Anosov-containing subgroup of the mapping class group of a surface, we construct a pseudo-Anosov with word length bounded by a constant depending only on the surface. More generally, in any subgroup G…

Let $\nu$ be a probability distribution over the semi-group of square matrices of size $d \ge 2$ over a locally compact field $\mathbb{K}$, \textit{e.g.} $\mathbb{R}$. We consider the random walk $\overline{\gamma}_n :=…

For any finitely generated group G, let n ---> \Phi_G(n) be the function that describes the rough asymptotic behavior of the probability of return to the identity element at time 2n of a symmetric simple random walk on G (this is an…

We obtain sharp estimates on the growth rate of stable commutator length on random (geodesic) words, and on random walks, in hyperbolic groups and groups acting nondegenerately on hyperbolic spaces. In either case, we show that with high…