Monotonicity for excited random walk in high dimensions

Monotonicity and regularity of the speed for excited random walks in higher dimensions

We introduce a method for studying monotonicity of the speed of excited random walks in high dimensions, based on a formula for the speed obtained via cut-times and Girsanov's transform. While the method gives rise to similar results as have been or can be obtained via the expansion method of van der Hofstad and Holmes, it may be more palatable to a general probabilistic audience. We also revisit the law of large numbers for stationary cookie environments. In particular, we introduce a new notion of $e_1-$exchangeable cookie environment and prove the law of large numbers for this case.

A Monotonicity Result for the Range of a Perturbed Random Walk

We consider a discrete time simple symmetric random walk on Z^d, d>=1, where the path of the walk is perturbed by inserting deterministic jumps. We show that for any time n and any deterministic jumps that we insert, the expected number of sites visited by the perturbed random walk up to time n is always larger than or equal to that for the unperturbed walk. This intriguing problem arises from the study of a particle among a Poisson system of moving traps with sub-diffusive trap motion. In particular, our result implies a variant of the Pascal principle, which asserts that among all determinis…

Monotonicity of the speed for biased random walk on Galton-Watson tree

Ben Arous, Fribergh and Sidoravicius \cite{GAV2014} proved that speed of biased random walk $RW_λ$ on a Galton-Watson tree without leaves is strictly decreasing for $λ\leq \frac{m_1}{1160},$ where $m_1$ is minimal degree of the Galton-Watson tree. And A\"ıdékon \cite{EA2013} improved this result to $λ\leq \frac{1}{2}.$ In this paper, we prove that for the $RW_λ$ on a Galton-Watson tree without leaves, its speed is strictly decreasing for $λ\in \left[0,\frac{m_1}{1+\sqrt{1-\frac{1}{m_1}}}\right]$ when $m_1\geq 2;$ and we owe the proof to A\"ıdékon \cite{EA2013}.

Monotonicity for continuous-time random walks

Consider continuous-time random walks on Cayley graphs where the rate assigned to each edge depends only on the corresponding generator. We show that the limiting speed is monotone increasing in the rates for infinite Cayley graphs that arise from Coxeter systems, but not for all Cayley graphs. On finite Cayley graphs, we show that the distance -- in various senses -- to stationarity is monotone decreasing in the rates for Coxeter systems and for abelian groups, but not for all Cayley graphs. We also find several examples of surprising behaviour in the dependence of the distance to stationarit…

Monotonicity of Avoidance Coupling on $K_N$

Answering a question by Angel, Holroyd, Martin, Wilson and Winkler, we show that the maximal number of non-colliding coupled simple random walks on the complete graph $K_N$, which take turns, moving one at a time, is monotone in $N$. We use this fact to couple $\lceil \frac N4 \rceil$ such walks on $K_N$, improving the previous $Ω(N/\log N)$ lower bound of Angel et al. We also introduce a new generalization of simple avoidance coupling which we call partially ordered simple avoidance coupling and provide a monotonicity result for this extension as well.

Excited random walk in three dimensions has positive speed

Excited random walk is a random walk that has a positive drift to the right when it reaches a vertex it hasn't been to before. We show that in three dimensions the walk drifts to the right in non-zero speed.

Excited Random Walk

A random walk on Z^d is excited if the first time it visits a vertex there is a bias in one direction, but on subsequent visits to that vertex the walker picks a neighbor uniformly at random. We show that excited random walk on Z^d, is transient iff d>1.

Central Limit Theorem for the Excited Random Walk in dimension $d \geq 2$

We prove that a law of large numbers and a central limit theorem hold for the excited random walk model in every dimension $d \geq 2$.

A proof of the Lyons-Pemantle-Peres monotonicity conjecture for high biases

The speed $v(β)$ of a $β$-biased random walk on a Galton-Watson tree without leaves is increasing for $β\geq 717$.

On the Speed of an Excited Asymmetric Random Walk

An excited random walk is a non-Markovian extension of the simple random walk, in which the walk's behavior at time $n$ is impacted by the path it has taken up to time $n$. The properties of an excited random walk are more difficult to investigate than those of a simple random walk. For example, the limiting speed of an excited random walk is either zero or unknown depending on its initial conditions. While its limiting speed is unknown in most cases, the qualitative behavior of an excited random walk is largely determined by a parameter $δ$ which can be computed explicitly. Despite this, it i…

Excited random walk in two dimensions has linear speed

Excited random walk is a process that has a drift to the right whenever it encounters a new vertex. The paper shows that in two dimensions it drifts to the right linearly in time.

Recurrence and transience of excited random walks on $\Z^d$ and strips

We investigate excited random walks on $\Z^d, d\ge 1,$ and on planar strips $\Z\times\{0,1,...,L-1\}$ which have a drift in a given direction. The strength of the drift may depend on a random i.i.d. environment and on the local time of the walk. We give exact criteria for recurrence and transience, thus generalizing results by Benjamini and Wilson for once-excited random walk on $\Z^d$ and by the author for multi-excited random walk on $\Z$.

Multi-excited random walks on integers

We introduce a class of nearest-neighbor integer random walks in random and non-random media, which includes excited random walks considered in the literature. At each site the random walker has a drift to the right, the strength of which depends on the environment at that site and on how often the walker has visited that site before. We give exact criteria for recurrence and transience and consider the speed of the walk.

An important excited random walk counter-example

In this paper, we give a detailed construction of an example of excited random walk with speed zero in an ergodic random environment that have an infinite average number of cookies in each site. This example confirms that a result of Mountford, Pimentel and Valle (2006), which gives a sufficient condition for excited random walks in deterministic environment to have positive speed, can not be extended to ergodic random environment.

Excited random walk against a wall

We analyze random walk in the upper half of a three dimensional lattice which goes down whenever it encounters a new vertex, a.k.a. excited random walk. We show that it is recurrent with an expected number of returns of square-root log n.

Strong Stationary Duality for Möbius monotone Markov chains: examples

We construct strong stationary dual chains for Ising model on a circle, non-symmetric random walk on square lattice and a random walk on hypercube. The strong stationary dual chains are all sharp and have the same state space as original chains. We use Möbius monotonicity of these chains with respect to natural orderings of the corresponding state spaces. This method provides an easy way to find eigenvalues in the Ising model and for a random walk on hypercube. Keywords: Markov chains; stochastic monotonicity; eigenvalues; Möbius monotonicity; strong stationary duality; strong stationary times…

Balanced Excited Random Walk in Two Dimensions

We give non-trivial upper and lower bounds on the range of the so-called Balanced Excited Random Walk in two dimensions, and verify a conjecture of Benjamini, Kozma and Schapira. To the best of our knowledge these are the first non-trivial results for this 2-dimensional model

Excited random walks: results, methods, open problems

We consider a class of self-interacting random walks in deterministic or random environments, known as excited random walks or cookie walks, on the d-dimensional integer lattice. The main purpose of this paper is two-fold: to give a survey of known results and some of the methods and to present several new results. The latter include functional limit theorems for transient one-dimensional excited random walks in bounded i.i.d. cookie environments as well as some zero-one laws. Several open problems are stated.

Zero-one law for directional transience of one dimensional excited random walks

The probability that a one dimensional excited random walk in stationary ergodic and elliptic cookie environment is transient to the right (left) is either zero or one. This solves a problem posed by Kosygina and Zerner [8].

Phase transition for the once-excited random walk on general trees

The phase transition of $M$-digging random on a general tree was studied by Collevecchio, Huynh and Kious (2018). In this paper, we study particularly the critical $M$-digging random walk on a superperiodic tree that is proved to be recurrent. We keep using the techniques introduced by Collevecchio, Kious and Sidoravicius (2017) with the aim of investigating the phase transition of Once-excited random walk on general trees. In addition, we prove if $\mathcal T$ is a tree whose branching number is larger than $1$, any multi-excited random walk on $\mathcal{T}$ moving, after excitation, like a s…

Extreme slowdowns for one-dimensional excited random walks

We study the asymptotics of the probabilities of extreme slowdown events for transient one-dimensional excited random walks. That is, if $\{X_n\}_{n\geq 0}$ is a transient one-dimensional excited random walk and $T_n = \min\{ k: \, X_k = n\}$, we study the asymptotics of probabilities of the form $P(X_n \leq n^γ)$ and $P(T_{n^γ} \geq n )$ with $γ< 1$. We show that there is an interesting change in the rate of decay of these extreme slowdown probabilities when $γ< 1/2$.

Large deviations and slowdown asymptotics for one-dimensional excited random walks

We study the large deviations of one-dimensional excited random walks. We prove a large deviation principle for both the hitting times and the position of the random walk and give a qualitative description of the respective rate functions. When the excited random walk is transient with positive speed $v_0$, then the large deviation rate function for the position of the excited random walk is zero on the interval $[0,v_0]$ and so probabilities such as $P(X_n < nv)$ for $v \in (0,v_0)$ decay subexponentially. We show that rate of decay for such slowdown probabilities is polynomial of the order $…

Functional limit laws for recurrent excited random walks with periodic cookie stacks

We consider one-dimensional excited random walks (ERWs) with periodic cookie stacks in the recurrent regime. We prove functional limit theorems for these walks which extend the previous results of D. Dolgopyat and E. Kosygina for excited random walks with "boundedly many cookies per site." In particular, in the non-boundary recurrent case the rescaled excited random walk converges in the standard Skorokhod topology to a Brownian motion perturbed at its extrema (BMPE). While BMPE is a natural limiting object for excited random walks with boundedly many cookies per site, it is far from obvious w…

A functional limit theorem for for excited random walks

We consider the limit behavior of an excited random walk (ERW), i.e., a random walk whose transition probabilities depend on the number of times the walk has visited to the current state. We prove that an ERW being naturally scaled converges in distribution to an excited Brownian motion that satisfies an SDE, where the drift of the unknown process depends on its local time. Similar result was obtained by Raimond and Schapira, their proof was based on the Ray-Knight type theorems. We propose a new method of investigations based on a study of the Radon-Nikodym density of the ERW distribution wit…

Recurrence and transience of a multi-excited random walk on a regular tree

We study a model of multi-excited random walk on a regular tree which generalizes the models of the once excited random walk and the digging random walk introduced by Volkov (2003). We show the existence of a phase transition of the recurrence/transience property of the walk. In particular, we prove that the asymptotic behavior of the walk depends on the order of the excitations, which contrasts with the one dimensional setting studied by Zerner (2005). We also consider the limiting speed of the walk in the transient regime and conjecture that it is not a monotonic function of the environment.

Monotonicity of average return probabilities for random walks in random environments

We extend a result of Lyons (2016) from fractional tiling of finite graphs to a version for infinite random graphs. The most general result is as follows. Let $\bf P$ be a unimodular probability measure on rooted networks $(G, o)$ with positive weights $w_G$ on its edges and with a percolation subgraph $H$ of $G$ with positive weights $w_H$ on its edges. Let ${\bf P}_{(G, o)}$ denote the conditional law of $H$ given $(G, o)$. Assume that $α:= {\bf P}_{(G, o)}\bigl[{o \in V(H)}\bigr] > 0$ is a constant $\bf P$-a.s. We show that if $\bf P$-a.s. whenever $e \in E(G)$ is adjacent to $o$, \[ {\bf E…

Excited random walks with non-nearest neighbor steps

Let $W$ be an integer valued random variable satisfying $E[W] =: δ\geq 0$ and $P(W<0)>0$, and consider a self-interacting random walk that behaves like a simple symmetric random walk with the exception that on the first visit to any integer $x\in \mathbb{Z}$ the size of the next step is an independent random variable with the same distribution as $W$. We show that this self-interacting random walk is recurrent if $δ\leq 1$ and transient if $δ>1$. This is a special case of our main result which concerns the recurrence and transience of excited random walks (or cookie random walks) with non-near…

A balanced excited random walk

The following random process on $\Z^4$ is studied. At first visit to a site, the two first coordinates perform a (2-dimensional) simple random walk step. At further visits, it is the last two coordinates which perform a simple random walk step. We prove that this process is almost surely transient. The lower dimensional versions are discussed and various generalizations and related questions are proposed.

Mutually excited random walks

Consider two random walks on $\mathbb{Z}$. The transition probabilities of each walk is dependent on trajectory of the other walker i.e. a drift $p>1/2$ is obtained in a position the other walker visited twice or more. This simple model has a speed which is, according to simulations, not monotone in $p$, without apparent "trap" behaviour. In this paper we prove the process has positive speed for $1/2<p<1$, and present a deterministic algorithm to approximate the speed and show the non-monotonicity.

Recurrence and transience of critical branching processes in random environment with immigration and an application to excited random walks

We establish recurrence and transience criteria for critical branching processes in random environment with immigration. These results are then applied to discuss recurrence and transience of a recurrent random walk in a random environment on Z that will be disturbed by cookies inducing a drift to the right of strength 1.

Z上暂态激发随机游走的最大占据时间

Maximum occupation time of a transient excited random walk on Z

研究暂态激发随机游走在Z上当前最常访问位点的占据时间的渐近行为，结果表明与随机环境中的随机游走不同，暂态激发随机游走不会在偏好位点（截至某日期最常访问的位点）上花费渐近正的时间比例。

Upper and Lower Bounds on the Speed of a One Dimensional Excited Random Walk

Excited random walks (ERWs) are a self-interacting non-Markovian random walk in which the future behavior of the walk is influenced by the number of times the walk has previously visited its current site. We study the speed of the walk, defined as $V = \lim_{n \rightarrow \infty} \frac{X_n}{n}$ where $X_n$ is the state of the walk at time $n$. While results exist that indicate when the speed is non-zero, there exists no explicit formula for the speed. It is difficult to solve for the speed directly due to complex dependencies in the walk since the next step of the walker depends on how many ti…

On the speed of the one-dimensional excited random walk in the transient regime

We study a class of nearest-neighbor discrete time integer random walks introduced by Zerner, the so called multi-excited random walks. The jump probabilities for such random walker have a drift to the right whose intensity depends on a random or non-random environment that also evolves in time according to the last visited site. A complete description of the recurrence and transience phases was given by Zerner under fairly general assumptions for the environment. We contribute in this paper with some results that allows us to point out if the random walker speed is strictly positive or not in…

骰子游戏、多项式漫步与反向Dirichlet分布

A dice game, a multinomial walk, and the inverted Dirichlet distribution

本文通过研究一个简单的骰子游戏，探讨了多项式漫步的有趣性质，利用Gamma与泊松分布、负多项式与反向Dirichlet分布之间的共轭关系，分析了游戏的胜负概率，并展示了正则化Beta函数的单调性及其对游戏胜负概率的影响，还研究了游戏参数趋于无穷时的渐进行为以及游戏最后获胜的概率。

Excursions of excited random walks on integers

Several phase transitions for excited random walks on the integers are known to be characterized by a certain drift parameter delta. For recurrence/transience the critical threshold is |delta|=1, for ballisticity it is |delta|=2 and for diffusivity |delta|=4. In this paper we establish a phase transition at |delta|=3. We show that the expected return time of the walker to the starting point, conditioned on return, is finite iff |delta|>3. This result follows from an explicit description of the tail behaviour of the return time as a function of delta, which is achieved by diffusion approximatio…

Positively and negatively excited random walks on integers, with branching processes

We consider excited random walks on the integers with a bounded number of i.i.d. cookies per site which may induce drifts both to the left and to the right. We extend the criteria for recurrence and transience by M. Zerner and for positivity of speed by A.-L. Basdevant and A. Singh to this case and also prove an annealed central limit theorem. The proofs are based on results from the literature concerning branching processes with migration and make use of a certain renewal structure.

d≥2维径向激发随机游走的形状定理

A shape theorem for a radially excited random walk in dimensions $d \ge 2$

本文研究d≥2维径向一次激发随机游走，证明其常返性及n步轨迹渐近为欧氏球的球形形状定理，证实了Kozma 2007年的相关猜想。

平衡激发随机游走 M(2,1,2) 的常返性与访问范围

Recurrence and range of the balanced excited random walk M(2,1,2)

本文证明平面平衡激发随机游走 M(2,1,2) 常返，其访问范围极限与平面简单随机游走相同，并推广至空间非均匀饼干环境。

关于广义多维激发随机游走暂态性的注记

A note on transience of generalized many-dimensional excited random walks

本文研究广义激发随机游走的一种变体，其漂移下界随时间衰减至零，证明当下界衰减慢于 $n^{-β}$ 时，游走在漂移方向上具有暂态性。

Deterministic walk in an excited random environment

Deterministic walk in an excited random environment is a non-Markov integer-valued process $(X_n)_{n=0}^{\infty}$, whose jump at time $n$ depends on the number of visits to the site $X_n$. The environment can be understood as stacks of cookies on each site of $\mathbb Z$. Once all cookies are consumed at a given site, every subsequent visit will result in a walk taking a step according to the direction prescribed by the last consumed cookie. If each site has exactly one cookie, then the walk ends in a loop if it ever visits the same site twice. If the number of cookies per site is increased to…

Excited Brownian Motions

We study a natural continuous time version of excited random walks, introduced by Norris, Rogers and Williams about twenty years ago. We obtain a necessary and sufficient condition for recurrence and for positive speed. This is analogous to results for excited (or cookie) random walks.

Recurrence/Transience criteria for excited random walks with finite-drift cookie stacks

We consider excited random walk (ERW) on $\mathbb{Z}$ in environments with identical stacks of infinitely many cookies at each site, subject to the constraint that the total drift per site $δ= \sum (2p_j - 1)$ is finite. Building on the methods of Kozma, Orenshtein, and Shinkar (arXiv:1311.7439), we show that ERW in finite-drift environments is recurrent when $|δ|<1$ and transient when $|δ|>1$. In the case $|δ|=1$ we prove that ERW is recurrent under mild assumptions on the environment. In addition, we show that ERW may be transient when $|δ|=1$, an interesting new behavior that was not presen…

Limit laws of transient excited random walks on integers

We consider excited random walks (ERWs) on integers with a bounded number of i.i.d. cookies per site without the non-negativity assumption on the drifts induced by the cookies. Kosygina and Zerner [KZ08] have shown that when the total expected drift per site, delta, is larger than 1 then ERW is transient to the right and, moreover, for delta>4 under the averaged measure it obeys the Central Limit Theorem. We show that when delta in (2,4] the limiting behavior of an appropriately centered and scaled excited random walk under the averaged measure is described by a strictly stable law with parame…

Excited Brownian motions as limits of excited random walks

We obtain the convergence in law of a sequence of excited (also called cookies) random walks toward an excited Brownian motion. This last process is a continuous semi-martingale whose drift is a function, say $ϕ$, of its local time. It was introduced by Norris, Rogers and Williams as a simplified version of Brownian polymers, and then recently further studied by the authors. To get our results we need to renormalize together the sequence of cookies, the time and the space in a convenient way. The proof follows a general approach already taken by Tóth and his coauthors in multiple occasions, wh…

Speed of excited random walks with long backward steps

We study a model of multi-excited random walk with non-nearest neighbour steps on $\mathbb Z$, in which the walk can jump from a vertex $x$ to either $x+1$ or $x-i$ with $i\in \{1,2,\dots,L\}$, $L\ge 1$. We first point out the multi-type branching structure of this random walk and then prove a limit theorem for a related multi-type Galton-Watson process with emigration, which is of independent interest. Combining this result and the method introduced by Basdevant and Singh [Probab. Theory Related Fields (2008), 141 (3-4)], we extend their result (w.r.t the case $L=1$) to our model. More specif…

Site monotonicity and uniform positivity for interacting random walks and the spin O(N) model with arbitrary N

We provide a uniformly-positive point-wise lower bound for the two-point function of the classical spin $O(N)$ model on the torus of $\mathbb{Z}^d$, $d \geq 3$, when $N \in \mathbb{N}_{>0}$ and the inverse temperature $β$ is large enough. This is a new result when $N>2$ and extends the classical result of Fröhlich, Simon and Spencer (1976). Our bound follows from a new site-monotonicity property of the two-point function which is of independent interest and holds not only for the spin $O(N)$ model with arbitrary $N \in \mathbb{N}_{>0}$, but for a wide class of systems of interacting random wal…

On variation of eigenvalues of birth and death matrices and random walk matrices

The purpose of this note is twofold: firstly to improve the known results on variation of extreme eigenvalues of birth and death matrices and random walk matrices; and secondly to progress towards the solution of a thirty years old open problem concerning the variation of eigenvalues of these matrices. Keywords: Birth and death matrices, random walk matrices, eigenvalues, monotonicity

Scaling limits of recurrent excited random walks on integers

We describe scaling limits of recurrent excited random walks (ERWs) on integers in i.i.d. cookie environments with a bounded number of cookies per site. We allow both positive and negative excitations. It is known that ERW is recurrent if and only if the expected total drift per site, delta, belongs to the interval [-1,1]. We show that if |delta|<1 then the diffusively scaled ERW under the averaged measure converges to a (delta,-delta)-perturbed Brownian motion. In the boundary case, |delta|=1, the space scaling has to be adjusted by an extra logarithmic term, and the weak limit of ERW happens…

An overview of the balanced excited random walk

The balanced excited random walk, introduced by Benjamini, Kozma and Schapira in $2011$, is defined as a discrete time stochastic process in $\mathbb Z^d$, depending on two integer parameters $1\le d_1,d_2\le d$, which whenever it is at a site $x\in\mathbb Z^d$ at time $n$, it jumps to $x\pm e_i$ with uniform probability, where $e_1,\ldots,e_d$ are the canonical vectors, for $1\le i\le d_1$, if the site $x$ was visited for the first time at time $n$, while it jumps to $x\pm e_i$ with uniform probability, for $1+d-d_2\le i\le d$, if the site $x$ was already visited before time $n$. Here we give…

单调性、拓扑学与凸性在随机游走中的递归性

Monotonicity, Topology, and Convexity of Recurrence in Random Walks

研究了随机游走中递归性、单调性、拓扑学与凸性的几何性质，证明了在特定条件下递归随机游走的参数空间具有闭合、路径连通和凸性等特性。

Excited random walk with periodic cookies

In this paper we consider an excited random walk on $\mathbb{Z}$ in identically piled periodic environment. This is a discrete time process on $\mathbb{Z}$ defined by parameters $(p_1,\dots p_M) \in [0,1]^M$ for some positive integer $M$, where the walker upon the $i$-th visit to $z \in \mathbb{Z}$ moves to $z+1$ with probability $p_{i\pmod M}$, and moves to $z-1$ with probability $1-p_{i \pmod M}$. We give an explicit formula in terms of the parameters $(p_1,\dots,p_M)$ which determines whether the walk is recurrent, transient to the left, or transient to the right. In particular, in the case…

局部无限Galton-Watson树上的有偏随机游走

Biased random walk on a locally infinite Galton-Watson tree

本文提出一种在具有无限度顶点的Galton-Watson树上的有偏随机游走变体，利用再生结构研究速度的可微性与单调性，并证明其为局部有限树上速度的极限。

Excursions and occupation times of critical excited random walks

The paper considers excited random walks (ERWs) on integers in i.i.d. environments with a bounded number of excitations per site. The emphasis is primarily on the critical case for the transition between recurrence and transience which occurs when the total expected drift $δ$ at each site of the environment is equal to 1 in absolute value. Several crucial estimates for ERWs fail in the critical case and require a separate treatment. The main results discuss the depth and duration of excursions from the origin for $|δ|=1$ as well as occupation times of negative and positive semi-axes and scalin…

On a general many-dimensional excited random walk

In this paper we study a substantial generalization of the model of excited random walk introduced in [Electron. Commun. Probab. 8 (2003) 86-92] by Benjamini and Wilson. We consider a discrete-time stochastic process $(X_n,n=0,1,2,...)$ taking values on ${\mathbb{Z}}^d$, $d\geq2$, described as follows: when the particle visits a site for the first time, it has a uniformly-positive drift in a given direction $\ell$; when the particle is at a site which was already visited before, it has zero drift. Assuming uniform ellipticity and that the jumps of the process are uniformly bounded, we prove th…