We consider Markovian models on graphs with local dynamics. We show that, under suitable conditions, such Markov chains exhibit both rapid convergence to equilibrium and strong concentration of measure in the stationary distribution. We illustrate our results with applications to some known chains from computer science and statistical mechanics.
We derive concentration inequalities for empirical means $\frac{1}{t} \int_0^t f(X_s) ds$ where $X_s$ is an irreducible Markov jump process on a finite state space and $f$ some observable. Using a Feynman-Kac semigroup we first derive a general concentration inequality. Then, based on this inequality we derive further concentration inequalities. Hereby we use three different methods; perturbation theory, Poincaré inequalities and information inequalities. We also obtain a Bernstein type concentration inequality.
We prove that an irreducible aperiodic Markov chain is geometrically ergodic if and only if any separately bounded functional of the stationary chain satisfies an appropriate subgaussian deviation inequality from its mean.
We prove an apparently novel concentration of measure result for Markov tree processes. The bound we derive reduces to the known bounds for Markov processes when the tree is a chain, thus strictly generalizing the known Markov process concentration results. We employ several techniques of potential independent interest, especially for obtaining similar results for more general directed acyclic graphical models.
We prove what appears to be the first concentration of measure result for hidden Markov processes. Our bound is stated in terms of the contraction coefficients of the underlying Markov process, and strictly generalizes the Markov process concentration results of Marton (1996) and Samson (2000). Somewhat surprisingly, the bound turns out to be the same as for ordinary Markov processes; this property, however, fails for general hidden/observed process pairs.
A class of examples is constructed to show that for strictly stationary Markov chains that are reversible, the simultaneous mixing rates for the $ρ$-mixing and strong mixing ($α$-mixing) conditions can be fairly arbitrary, within certain unavoidable tight restrictions. The examples constructed here have the added property that the mixing rate for the absolute regularity ($β$-mixing) condition is within a constant factor of that for strong mixing.
We consider sampling and enumeration problems for Markov equivalence classes. We create and analyze a Markov chain for uniform random sampling on the DAGs inside a Markov equivalence class. Though the worst case is exponentially slow mixing, we find a condition on the Markov equivalence class for polynomial time mixing. We also investigate the ratio of Markov equivalence classes to DAGs and a Markov chain of He, Jia, and Yu for random sampling of sparse Markov equivalence classes.
It is well known that for a strictly stationary, reversible, Harris recurrent Markov chain, the $ρ$-mixing condition is equivalent to geometric ergodicity and to a "spectral gap" condition. In this note, it will be shown with an example that for that class of Markov chains, the "interlaced" variant of the $ρ$-mixing condition fails to be equivalent to those conditions.
Using the method of transportation-information inequality introduced in \cite{GLWY}, we establish Bernstein type's concentration inequalities for empirical means $\frac 1t \int_0^t g(X_s)ds$ where $g$ is a unbounded observable of the symmetric Markov process $(X_t)$. Three approaches are proposed : functional inequalities approach ; Lyapunov function method ; and an approach through the Lipschitzian norm of the solution to the Poisson equation. Several applications and examples are studied.
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 distributions of finite Markov chains. Stationary distributions can be computed from the Karnofsky--Rhodes and McCammond expansion of the right Cayley graph of the finite semigroup underlying the Markov chain. Using loop graphs, which are planar graphs consisting of a straight line with attached loops, there are rational expressions for the stationary distribut…
We study Talagrand concentration and Poincaré type inequalities for unbounded pure jump Markov processes. In particular we focus on processes with degenerate jumps that depend on the past of the whole system, based on the model introduced by Galves and Löcherbach in \cite{G-L}, in order to describe the activity of a biological neural network. As a result we obtain exponential rates of convergence to equilibrium.
A nonnegative coarse Ricci curvature for a Markov chain and the existence of an attractive point implies the concentration of the invariant probability measure around this point. The mass outside balls centered at the attractive point, as a function of the radius, decreases at least as fast as the exponential of a double integral of the coarse Ricci curvature. This is exactly the behaviour of the density of the reversible measure for diffusion processes on the real line.
We develop Markov chain mixing time estimates for a class of Markov chains with restricted transitions. We assume transitions may occur along a cycle of $n$ nodes and on $n^γ$ additional edges, where $γ< 1$. We find that the mixing times of reversible Markov chains properly interpolate between the mixing times of the cycle with no added edges and of the cycle with $cn$ added edges (which is in turn a Small World Network model). In the case of non-reversible Markov-chains, a considerable gap remains between lower and upper bounds, but simulations give hope to experience a significant speedup co…
Quantum walks on graphs have been shown in certain cases to mix quadratically faster than their classical counterparts. Lifted Markov chains, consisting of a Markov chain on an extended state space which is projected back down to the original state space, also show considerable speedups in mixing time. Here, we construct a lifted Markov chain on a graph with $n^2 D(G)$ vertices that mixes exactly to the average mixing distribution of a quantum walk on the graph $G$ with $n$ vertices, where $D(G)$ is the diameter of $G$. Moreover, the mixing time of this chain is $D(G)$ timesteps, and we prove …
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 Markov chain. Expressions for the probability generating function, and hence the probability distribution of the mixing time starting in state i are derived and special cases explored. This extends the results of the author regarding the expected time to mixing [J.J. Hunter, Mixing times with applications to perturbed Markov chains, Linear Algebra Appl. 417 (2…
To find the number of assignments of zeros and ones satisfying a specific Knapsack Problem is $\#P$ hard, so only approximations are envisageable. A Markov chain allowing uniform sampling of all possible solutions is given by Luby, Randall and Sinclair. In 2005, Morris and Sinclair, by using a flow argument, have shown that the mixing time of this Markov chain is $\mathcal{O}(n^{9/2+ε})$, for any $ε> 0$. By using a canonical path argument on the distributive lattice structure of the set of solutions, we obtain an improved bound, the mixing time is given as $τ_{_{x}}(ε) \leq n^{3} \ln (16 ε^{-1…
In this paper we investigate the local limit theorem for additive functionals of a nonstationary Markov chain with finite or infinite second moment. The moment conditions are imposed on the individual summands and the weak dependence structure is expressed in terms of some uniformly mixing coefficients.
Inequalities between transportation costs and Fisher information are known to characterize certain concentration properties of Markov processes around their invariant measures. This note provides a new characterization of the quadratic transportation-information inequality $W_2I$ in terms of a dimension-free concentration property for i.i.d. (conditionally on the initial positions) copies of the underlying Markov process. This parallels Gozlan's characterization of the quadratic transportation-entropy inequality $W_2H$. The proof is based on a new Laplace-type principle for the operator norms …
This paper brings some insights of $ψ'$-mixing, $ψ^*$-mixing and $ψ$-mixing for copula-based Markov chains and the perturbations of their copulas. We provide new tools to check Markov chains for $ψ$-mixing or $ψ'$-mixing, and also show that perturbations of $ψ'$-mixing copula-based Markov chains are $ψ'$-mixing while perturbations of $ψ$-mixing Markov chains are not necessarily $ψ$-mixing Markov chains, even when the perturbed copula is $ψ-mixing$. Some examples of copula families are considered. A statistical study is provided to emphasize the impact of perturbations on copula-based Markov ch…
The switch chain is a well-known Markov chain for sampling directed graphs with a given degree sequence. While not ergodic in general, we show that it is ergodic for regular degree sequences. We then prove that the switch chain is rapidly mixing for regular directed graphs of degree d, where d is any positive integer-valued function of the number of vertices. We bound the mixing time by bounding the eigenvalues of the chain. A new result is presented and applied to bound the smallest (most negative) eigenvalue. This result is a modification of a lemma by Diaconis and Stroock, and by using it w…
The hitting and mixing times are two fundamental quantities associated with Markov chains. In Peres and Sousi[PS2015] and Oliveira[Oli2012], the authors show that the mixing times and "worst-case" hitting times of reversible Markov chains on finite state spaces are equal up to some universal multiplicative constant. We use tools from nonstandard analysis to extend this result to reversible Markov chains on general state spaces that satisfy the strong Feller property. Finally, we show that this asymptotic equivalence can be used to find bounds on the mixing times of a large class of Markov chai…
We consider Markov chains which are polynomially mixing, in a weak sense expressed in terms of the space of functions on which the mixing speed is controlled. In this context, we prove polynomial large and moderate deviations inequalities. These inequalities can be applied in various natural situations coming from probability theory or dynamical systems. Finally, we discuss examples from these various settings showing that our inequalities are sharp.
Many finite-state reversible Markov chains can be naturally decomposed into "projection" and "restriction" chains. In this paper we provide bounds on the total variation mixing times of the original chain in terms of the mixing properties of these related chains. This paper is in the tradition of existing bounds on Poincare and log-Sobolev constants of Markov chains in terms of similar decompositions [JSTV04, MR02, MR06, MY09]. Our proofs are simple, relying largely on recent results relating hitting and mixing times of reversible Markov chains [PS13, Oli12]. We describe situations in which ou…
These are the notes for the minicourse on Markov chains delivered at the Saint Petersburg Summer School, June 2012. The main emphasis is on methods for estimating mixing times (for finite chains) and escape rates (for infinite chains). Lamplighter groups are key examples in both topics and the Varopolous-Carne long range estimate is useful in both settings.
Concentration bounds for non-product, non-Haar measures are fairly recent: the first such result was obtained for contracting Markov chains by Marton in 1996 via the coupling method. The work that followed, with few exceptions, also used coupling. Although this technique is of unquestionable utility as a theoretical tool, it is not always simple to apply. As an alternative to coupling, we use the elementary Markov contraction lemma to obtain simple, useful, and apparently novel concentration results for various Markov-type processes. Our technique consists of expressing probabilities as matrix…
We give a bound on the mixing time of a uniformly ergodic, reversible Markov chain in terms of the spectral radius of the transition operator. This bound has been established previously in finite state spaces, and is widely believed to hold in general state spaces, but a proof has not been provided to our knowledge.
We establish three remarkable consequences of non-negative curvature for sparse Markov chains. First, their conductance decreases logarithmically with the number of states. Second, their displacement is at least diffusive until the mixing time. Third, they never exhibit the cutoff phenomenon. The first result provides a nearly sharp quantitative answer to a classical question of Ollivier, Milman and Naor. The second settles a conjecture of Lee and Peres for graphs with non-negative curvature. The third offers a striking counterpoint to the recently established cutoff for non-negatively curved …
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 is to a class of Markov chains introduced by Luby, Randall, and Sinclair to generate random tilings of regions by lozenges. For an L X L region we bound the mixing time by O(L^4 log L), which improves on the previous bound of O(L^7), and we show the new bound to be essentially tight. In another application we resolve a few questions raised by Diaconis and Sal…
A mixing Markov chain is proved to be realized as a random walk in a directed graph subject to a synchronizing road coloring. The result ensures existence of appropriate random mappings in Propp--Wilson's coupling from the past. The proof is based on the road coloring theorem. A necessary and sufficient condition for approximate preservation of entropies is also given.
We investigate the transportation cost-information inequalities for bifurcating Markov chains which are a class of processes indexed by binary tree. These processes provide models for cell growth when each individual in one generation gives birth to two offsprings in the next one. Transportation cost inequalities provide useful concentra-tion inequalities. We also study deviation inequalities for the empiri-cal means under relaxed assumptions on the Wasserstein contraction of the Markov kernels. Applications to bifurcating non linear autore-gressive processes are considered: deviation inequali…
In this paper we investigate the local limit theorem for additive functionals of nonstationary Markov chains that converge in distribution. We consider both the lattice and the non-lattice cases. The results are also new in the stationary setting and lead to local limit theorems linked to convergence to stable distributions. The conditions are imposed to individual summands and are expressed in terms of lower psi-mixing coefficients.
Using the renewal approach we prove exponential inequalities for additive functionals and empirical processes of ergodic Markov chains, thus obtaining counterparts of inequalities for sums of independent random variables. The inequalities do not require functions of the chain to be bounded and moreover all the involved constants are given by explicit formulas whenever the usual drift condition holds, which may be of interest in practical applications e.g. to MCMC algorithms.
For a stochastic process with state space some Polish space, this paper gives sufficient conditions on the initial and conditional distributions for the joint law to satisfy Gaussian concentration inequalities, transportation inequalities and also logarithmic Sobolev inequalities in the case of the Euclidean space. In several cases, the obtained constants are of optimal order of growth with respect to the number of variables, or are independent of this number. These results extend results known for mutually independent variables to weakly dependent variables under Dobrushin-Shlosman type condi…
It is often possible to speed up the mixing of a Markov chain $\{ X_{t} \}_{t \in \mathbb{N}}$ on a state space $Ω$ by \textit{lifting}, that is, running a more efficient Markov chain $\{ \hat{X}_{t} \}_{t \in \mathbb{N}}$ on a larger state space $\hatΩ \supset Ω$ that projects to $\{ X_{t} \}_{t \in \mathbb{N}}$ in a certain sense. In [CLP99], Chen, Lov{á}sz and Pak prove that for Markov chains on finite state spaces, the mixing time of any lift of a Markov chain is at least the square root of the mixing time of the original chain, up to a factor that depends on the stationary measure. Unfort…
We derive sufficient conditions for a family $(X^n,ρ_n,P_n)$ of metric probability spaces to have the measure concentration property. Specifically, if the sequence $\{P_n\}$ of probability measures satisfies a strong mixing condition (which we call $η$-mixing) and the sequence of metrics $\{ρ_n\}$ is what we call $Ψ$-dominated, we show that $(X^n,ρ_n,P_n)$ is a normal Levy family. We establish these properties for some metric probability spaces, including the possibly novel $X=[0,1]$, $ρ_n=\ell_1$ case.
We consider additive functionals of Markov processes in continuous time with general (metric) state spaces. We derive concentration bounds for their exponential moments and moments of finite order. Applications include diffusions, interacting particle systems and random walks. The method is based on coupling estimates and not spectral theory, hence reversibility is not needed. We bound the exponential moments(or the moments of finite order) in terms of a so-called coupled function difference, which in turn is estimated using the generalized coupling time. Along the way we prove a general relat…
We present a Markov chain on the $n$-dimensional hypercube $\{0,1\}^n$ which satisfies $t_{\rm mix}(ε) = n[1 + o(1)]$. This Markov chain alternates between random and deterministic moves and we prove that the chain has cut-off with a window of size at most $O(n^{0.5+δ})$ where $δ>0$. The deterministic moves correspond to a linear shift register.
We provide explicit nonasymptotic estimates for the rate of convergence of empirical means of Markov chains, together with a Gaussian or exponential control on the deviations of empirical means. These estimates hold under a "positive curvature" assumption expressing a kind of metric ergodicity, which generalizes the Ricci curvature from differential geometry and, on finite graphs, amounts to contraction under path coupling.
We obtain moment and Gaussian bounds for general Lipschitz functions evaluated along the sample path of a Markov chain. We treat Markov chains on general (possibly unbounded) state spaces via a coupling method. If the first moment of the coupling time exists, then we obtain a variance inequality. If a moment of order 1+epsilon of the coupling time exists, then depending on the behavior of the stationary distribution, we obtain higher moment bounds. This immediately implies polynomial concentration inequalities. In the case that a moment of order 1+epsilon is finite uniformly in the starting po…
We generalise the coarse Ricci curvature method of Ollivier by considering the coarse Ricci curvature of multiple steps in the Markov chain. This implies new spectral bounds and concentration inequalities. We also extend this approach to the bounds for MCMC empirical averages obtained by Joulin and Ollivier. We prove a recursive lower bound on the coarse Ricci curvature of multiple steps in the Markov chain, making our method broadly applicable. Applications include the split-merge random walk on partitions, Glauber dynamics with random scan and systemic scan for statistical physical spin mode…
We give the first polynomial upper bound on the mixing time of the edge-flip Markov chain for unbiased dyadic tilings, resolving an open problem originally posed by Janson, Randall, and Spencer in 2002. A dyadic tiling of size n is a tiling of the unit square by n non-overlapping dyadic rectangles, each of area 1/n, where a dyadic rectangle is any rectangle that can be written in the form [a2^{-s}, (a+1)2^{-s}] \times [b2^{-t}, (b+1)2^{-t}] for non-negative integers a,b,s,t. The edge-flip Markov chain selects a random edge of the tiling and replaces it with its perpendicular bisector if doing …
Consider a Markov chain with finite state space and suppose you wish to change time replacing the integer step index $n$ with a random counting process $N(t)$. What happens to the mixing time of the Markov chain? We present a partial reply in a particular case of interest in which $N(t)$ is a counting renewal process with power-law distributed inter-arrival times of index $β$. We then focus on $β\in (0,1)$, leading to infinite expectation for inter-arrival times and further study the situation in which inter-arrival times follow the Mittag-Leffler distribution of order $β$.
This paper originally showed a lower bound on mixing time for a non-reversible Markov chain in terms of its largest non-trivial eigenvalue, and used this to re-derive some generalizations of results of Fan Chung. However, the paper has been withdrawn because I have been made aware that the lower bound was previously known.
We show how to exploit symmetries of a graph to efficiently compute the fastest mixing Markov chain on the graph (i.e., find the transition probabilities on the edges to minimize the second-largest eigenvalue modulus of the transition probability matrix). Exploiting symmetry can lead to significant reduction in both the number of variables and the size of matrices in the corresponding semidefinite program, thus enable numerical solution of large-scale instances that are otherwise computationally infeasible. We obtain analytic or semi-analytic results for particular classes of graphs, such as e…
Non-Gaussian concentration estimates are obtained for invariant probability measures of reversible Markov processes. We show that the functional inequalities approach combined with a suitable Lyapunov condition allows us to circumvent the classical Lipschitz assumption of the observables. Our method is general and covers diffusions as well as pure-jump Markov processes on unbounded spaces.
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 $O(n^{3/2})$ with probability bounded away from 0. If only one of the two modifications were performed, the mixing time would stay $Ω(n^2)$.