English

A Gaussian upper bound for martingale small-ball probabilities

Probability 2015-09-10 v3

Abstract

Consider a discrete-time martingale {Xt}\{X_t\} taking values in a Hilbert space H\mathcal H. We show that if for some L1L \geq 1, the bounds E[Xt+1XtH2Xt]=1\mathbb{E} \left[\|X_{t+1}-X_t\|_{\mathcal H}^2 \mid X_t\right]=1 and Xt+1XtHL\|X_{t+1}-X_t\|_{\mathcal H} \leq L are satisfied for all times t0t \geq 0, then there is a constant c=c(L)c = c(L) such that for 1Rt1 \leq R \leq \sqrt{t}, P(XtHRX0=x0)cRtex0H2/(6L2t).\mathbb{P}(\|X_t\|_{\mathcal H} \leq R \mid X_0 = x_0) \leq c \frac{R}{\sqrt{t}} e^{-\|x_0\|_{\mathcal H}^2/(6 L^2 t)}\,. Following [Lee-Peres, Ann. Probab. 2013], this has applications to diffusive estimates for random walks on vertex-transitive graphs.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1405.5980,
  title  = {A Gaussian upper bound for martingale small-ball probabilities},
  author = {James R. Lee and Yuval Peres and Charles K. Smart},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1405.5980},
  year   = {2015}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-22T04:21:43.690Z