Let a simple random walk run inside a torus of dimension three or higher for a number of steps which is a constant proportion of the volume. We examine geometric properties of the range, the random subgraph induced by the set of vertices visited by the walk. Distance and mixing bounds for the typical range are proven that are a $k$-iterated log factor from those on the full torus for arbitrary $k$. The proof uses hierarchical renormalization and techniques that can possibly be applied to other random processes in the Euclidean lattice. We use the same technique to bound the heat kernel of a random walk on random interlacements.
For $d\ge 3$ we construct a new coupling of the trace left by a random walk on a large $d$-dimensional discrete torus with the random interlacements on $\mathbb Z^d$. This coupling has the advantage of working up to macroscopic subsets of the torus. As an application, we show a sharp phase transition for the diameter of the component of the vacant set on the torus containing a given point. The threshold where this phase transition takes place coincides with the critical value $u_*(d)$ of random interlacements on $\mathbb Z^d$. Our main tool is a variant of the soft-local time coupling techniqu…
We investigate the relation between the local picture left by the trajectory of a simple random walk on the torus (Z/NZ)^d, d >= 3, until u N^d time steps, u > 0, and the model of random interlacements recently introduced by Sznitman. In particular, we show that for large N, the joint distribution of the local pictures in the neighborhoods of finitely many distant points left by the walk up to time u N^d converges to independent copies of the random interlacement at level u.
We study a biased random walk on the interlacement set of $\mathbb{Z}^d$ for $d\geq 3$. Although the walk is always transient, we can show, in the case $d=3$, that for any value of the bias the walk has a zero limiting speed and actually moves slower than any power.
We consider the interlacement Poisson point process on the space of doubly-infinite Z^d-valued trajectories modulo time-shift, tending to infinity at positive and negative infinite times. The set of vertices and edges visited by at least one of these trajectories is the random interlacement at level u of Sznitman arXiv:0704.2560 . We prove that for any u>0, almost surely, (1) any two vertices in the random interlacement at level u are connected via at most ceiling(d/2) trajectories of the point process, and (2) there are vertices in the random interlacement at level u which can only be connect…
We define the model of two-dimensional random interlacements using simple random walk trajectories conditioned on never hitting the origin, and then obtain some properties of this model. Also, for random walk on a large torus conditioned on not hitting the origin up to some time proportional to the mean cover time, we show that the law of the vacant set around the origin is close to that of random interlacements at the corresponding level. Thus, this new model provides a way to understand the structure of the set of late points of the covering process from a microscopic point of view.
We base ourselves on the construction of the two-dimensional random interlacements [12] to define the one-dimensional version of the process. For this constructions we consider simple random walks conditioned on never hitting the origin, which makes them transient. We also compare this process to the conditional random walk on the ring graph. Our results are the convergence of the vacant set on the ring graph to the vacant set of one-dimensional random interlacements, a central limit theorem for the interlacements' local time for sites far from the origin and the convergence in law of the loca…
We consider connectivity properties of the Branching Interlacements model in $\mathbb{Z}^d,~d\ge5$, recently introduced by Angel, Ráth and Zhu in 2016. Using stochastic dimension techniques we show that every two vertices visited by the branching interlacements are connected via at most $\lceil d/4\rceil$ conditioned critical branching random walks from the underlying Poisson process, and that this upper bound is sharp. In particular every such two branching random walks intersect if and only if $5\le d\le 8$. The stochastic dimension of branching random walk result is of independent interest.…
We introduce a model of branching interlacements for general critical offspring distributions. It consists of a countable collection of infinite tree-indexed random walk trajectories on $Z^d,d\geq5$. We show that this model turns out to be the local limit of the tree-indexed random walk in a discrete torus, conditioned on the size proportional to the volume of the torus. This generalizes the previous results of Angel, Ráth and the author, for the critical geometric offspring distribution. Our model also includes the model of random interlacements introduced by Sznitman as a degenerate case. To…
Following the recent work of Sznitman (arXiv:0805.4516), we investigate the microscopic picture induced by a random walk trajectory on a cylinder of the form G_N x Z, where G_N is a large finite connected weighted graph, and relate it to the model of random interlacements on infinite transient weighted graphs. Under suitable assumptions, the set of points not visited by the random walk until a time of order |G_N|^2 in a neighborhood of a point with Z-component of order |G_N| converges in distribution to the law of the vacant set of a random interlacement on a certain limit model describing the…
The aim of this note is to give an alternative construction of interlacements - as introduced by Sznitman - which makes use of classical probabilistic potential theory. In particular, we outline that the intensity measure of an interlacement is known in probabilistic potential theory under the name "approximate Markov chain" or "quasi-process". We provide a simple construction of random interlacements through (unconditioned) two-sided Brownian motions (resp. two-sided random walks) involving Mitro's general construction of Kuznetsov measures and a Palm measures relation due to Fitzsimmons. In …
We prove a shape theorem for the internal (graph) distance on the interlacement set $\mathcal{I}^u$ of the random interlacement model on $\mathbb Z^d$, $d\ge 3$. We provide large deviation estimates for the internal distance of distant points in this set, and use these estimates to study the internal distance on the range of a simple random walk on a discrete torus.
We introduce the model of two-dimensional continuous random interlacements, which is constructed using the Brownian trajectories conditioned on not hitting a fixed set (usually, a disk). This model yields the local picture of Wiener sausage on the torus around a late point. As such, it can be seen as a continuous analogue of discrete two-dimensional random interlacements [Comets, Popov, Vachkovskaia, 2016]. At the same time, one can view it as (restricted) Brownian loops through infinity. We establish a number of results analogous to these of [Comets, Popov, Vachkovskaia, 2016; Comets, Popov, …
We consider random interlacements on Z^d, with d bigger or equal to 3, when their vacant set is in a strongly percolative regime. We derive an asymptotic upper bound on the probability that the random interlacements disconnect a box of large side-length from the boundary of a larger homothetic box. As a corollary, we obtain an asymptotic upper bound on a similar quantity, where the random interlacements are replaced by the simple random walk. It is plausible, but open at the moment, that these asymptotic upper bounds match the asymptotic lower bounds obtained by Xinyi Li and the author in arXi…
For the model of two-dimensional random interlacements in the critical regime (i.e., $α=1$), we prove that the vacant set is a.s.\ infinite, thus solving an open problem from arXiv:1502.03470. Also, we prove that the entrance measure of simple random walk on annular domains has certain regularity properties; this result is useful when dealing with soft local times for excursion processes.
We explore some of the connections between the local picture left by the trace of simple random walk on a discrete cylinder with base a d-dimensional torus, d at least 2, of side-length N running for times of order N^{2d} and the model of random interlacements recently introduced in arXiv:0704.2560. In particular we show that when the base becomes large, in the neighborhood of a point of the cylinder with a vertical component of order N^d, the complement of the set of points visited by the walk up to times of order N^{2d}, is close in distribution to the law of the vacant set of random interla…
We consider simple random walk on a discrete cylinder with base a large d-dimensional torus of side-length N, when d is two or more. We develop a stochastic domination control on the local picture left by the random walk in boxes of side-length almost of order N, at certain random times comparable to the square of the number of sites in the base. We show a domination control in terms of the trace left in similar boxes by random interlacements in the infinite (d+1)-dimensional cubic lattice at a suitably adjusted level. As an application we derive a lower bound on the disconnection time of the …
We define two families of Poissonian soups of bidirectional trajectories on $\mathbb{Z}^2$, which can be seen to adequately describe the local picture of the trace left by a random walk on the two-dimensional torus $(\mathbb{Z}/N \mathbb{Z})^2$, started from the uniform distribution, run up to a time of order $(N\log N)^2$ and forced to avoid a fixed point. The local limit of the latter was recently established in arXiv:1502.03470. Our construction proceeds by considering, somewhat in the spirit of statistical mechanics, a sequence of finite-volume approximations, consisting of random walks av…
The model of random interlacements is a one-parameter family $\mathcal I^u,$ $u \ge 0,$ of random subsets of $\mathbb{Z}^d,$ which locally describes the trace of simple random walk on a $d$-dimensional torus run up to time $u$ times its volume. Its complement, the so-called vacant set $\mathcal V^u$, has been shown to undergo a non-trivial percolation phase-transition in $u;$ i.e., there exists $u_*(d) \in (0, \infty)$ such that for $u \in [0, u_*(d))$ the vacant set $\mathcal V^u$ contains a unique infinite connected component $\mathcal V_\infty^u,$ while for $u > u_*(d)$ it consists of finit…
We study the asymptotic behavior for large $N$ of the disconnection time $T_N$ of a simple random walk on the discrete cylinder $(\mathbb{Z}/N\mathbb{Z})^d\times\mathbb{Z}$, when $d\ge2$. We explore its connection with the model of random interlacements on $\mathbb{Z}^{d+1}$ recently introduced in [Ann. Math., in press], and specifically with the percolative properties of the vacant set left by random interlacements. As an application we show that in the large $N$ limit the tail of $T_N/N^{2d}$ is dominated by the tail of the first time when the supremum over the space variable of the Brownian…
This article proves that, in terms of local times, the rescaled and recentered cover times of finite subsets of the discrete cylinder by simple random walk converge in law to the Gumbel distribution, as the cardinality of the set goes to infinity. As applications we obtain several other results related to covering in the discrete cylinder. Our method is new and involves random interlacements, which were introduced by Sznitman in arXiv:0704.2560. To enable the proof we develop a new stronger coupling of simple random walk in the cylinder and random interlacements, which is also of independent i…
We study the trajectory of a simple random walk on a d-regular graph with d>2 and locally tree-like structure as the number n of vertices grows. Examples of such graphs include random d-regular graphs and large girth expanders. For these graphs, we investigate percolative properties of the set of vertices not visited by the walk until time un, where u>0 is a fixed positive parameter. We show that this so-called vacant set exhibits a phase transition in u in the following sense: there exists an explicitly computable threshold u* such that, with high probability as n grows, if u<u*, then the lar…
We introduce a model of random interlacements made of a countable collection of doubly infinite paths on Z^d, d bigger or equal to 3. A non-negative parameter u measures how many trajectories enter the picture. This model describes in the large N limit the microscopic structure in the bulk, which arises when considering the disconnection time of a discrete cylinder with base a d-1-dimensional discrete torus of side-length N, or the set of points visited by simple random walk on the d-dimensional discrete torus of side-length N by times of order uN^d. We study the percolative properties of the …
We extend the Aldous-Broder algorithm to generate the wired uniform spanning forests (WUSFs) of infinite, transient graphs. We do this by replacing the simple random walk in the classical algorithm with Sznitman's random interlacement process. We then apply this algorithm to study the WUSF, showing that every component of the WUSF is one-ended almost surely in any graph satisfying a certain weak anchored isoperimetric condition, that the number of `excessive ends' in the WUSF is non-random in any graph, and also that every component of the WUSF is one-ended almost surely in any transient unimo…
We introduce a construction that gives rise to a variety of "geometric" finite random graphs, and describe connections to the Poisson boundary, Naim's kernel, and Sznitman's random interlacements.
We prove quenched invariance principle for simple random walk on the unique infinite percolation cluster for a general class of percolation models on Z^d, d>=2, with long-range correlations introduced in arXiv:1212.2885, solving one of the open problems from there. This gives new results for random interlacements in dimension d>=3 at every level, as well as for the vacant set of random interlacements and the level sets of the Gaussian free field in the regime of the so-called local uniqueness (which is believed to coincide with the whole supercritical regime). An essential ingredient of our pr…
This work proves that the fluctuations of the cover time of simple random walk in the discrete torus of dimension at least three with large side-length are governed by the Gumbel extreme value distribution. This result was conjectured for example in the book by Aldous & Fill. We also derive some corollaries which qualitatively describe "how" covering happens. In addition, we develop a new and stronger coupling of the model of random interlacements, introduced by Sznitman, and random walk in the torus. This coupling is used to prove the cover time result and is also of independent interest.
We study the percolative properties of random interlacements on the product of G with the integer line Z, when G is a weighted graph satisfying certain sub-Gaussian estimates attached to the parameters alpha > 1, measuring the volume growth on G, and beta between 2 and alpha + 1, measuring the sub-diffusive nature of the random walk on G. We develop decoupling inequalities, which are a key tool in showing that the critical level u_* for the percolation of the vacant set of random interlacements is always finite in our set-up, and that it is positive when alpha \geq 1 + beta/2. We also obtain s…
It has been recently understood (arXiv:1212.2885, arXiv:1310.4764, arXiv:1410.0605) that for a general class of percolation models on $\mathbb{Z}^d$ satisfying suitable decoupling inequalities, which includes i.a.\ Bernoulli percolation, random interlacements and level sets of the Gaussian free field, large scale geometry of the unique infinite cluster in strongly percolative regime is qualitatively the same; in particular, the random walk on the infinite cluster satisfies the quenched invariance principle, Gaussian heat-kernel bounds and local CLT. In this paper we consider the random walk lo…
The von Neumann-Day problem asks whether every non-amenable group contains a non-abelian free group. It was answered in the negative by Ol'shanskii in the 1980s. The measurable version (formulated by Gaboriau-Lyons) asks whether every non-amenable measured equivalence relation contains a non-amenable treeable subequivalence relation. This paper obtains a positive answer in the case of arbitrary Bernoulli shifts over a non-amenable group, extending work of Gaboriau-Lyons. The proof uses an approximation to the random interlacement process by random multistep of geometrically-killed random walk …
We prove a {\it{quenched}} large deviation principle (LDP) for a simple random walk on a supercritical percolation cluster (SRWPC) on $\mathbb Z^d$ ($d\geq 2$). The models under interest include classical Bernoulli bond and site percolation as well as models that exhibit long range correlations, like the random cluster model, the random interlacement and {the vacant set of random interlacements} (for $d\geq 3$) and the level sets of the Gaussian free field ($d\geq 3$). Inspired by the methods developed by Kosygina, Rezakhanlou and Varadhan ([KRV06]) for proving quenched LDP for elliptic diffus…
We consider simple random walk on Z^d, d bigger or equal to 3. Motivated by the work of A.-S. Sznitman and the author in arXiv:1304.7477 and arXiv:1310.2177, we investigate the asymptotic behaviour of the probability that a large body gets disconnected from infinity by the set of points visited by a simple random walk. We derive asymptotic lower bounds that bring into play random interlacements. Although open at the moment, some of the lower bounds that we obtain possibly match the asymptotic upper bounds obtained in a recent article of A.-S. Sznitman. This potentially yields special significa…
We study the simple random walk on the giant component of a supercritical Erdős-Rényi random graph on $n$ vertices, in particular the so-called vacant set at level $u$, the complement of the trajectory of the random walk run up to a time proportional to $u$ and $n$. We show that the component structure of the vacant set exhibits a phase transition at a critical parameter $u_{\star}$: For $u<u_{\star}$ the vacant set has with high probability a unique giant component of order $n$ and all other components small, of order at most $\log^{7}n$, whereas for $u>u_{\star}$ it has with high probability…
We examine the sets of late points of a symmetric random walk on $Z^2$ projected onto the torus $Z^2_K$, culminating in a limit theorem for the cover time of the toral random walk. This extends the work done for the simple random walk in Dembo, et al. (2006) to a large class of random walks projected onto the lattice torus. The approach uses comparisons between planar and toral hitting times and distributions on annuli, and uses only random walk methods.
We give Harnack inequalities for the hitting distributions of a large family of symmetric random walks on $\Z^2$, and their projections onto the lattice torus $\Z^2_K$. This extends a framework for the simple random walk in Dembo, et al. (2006), and generalizes the results in Bass, Rosen (2007) to the toral projection.
We consider one or more independent random walks on the $d\ge 3$ dimensional discrete torus. The walks start from vertices chosen independently and uniformly at random. We analyze the fluctuation behavior of the size of some random sets arising from the trajectories of the random walks at a time proportional to the size of the torus. Examples include vacant sets and the intersection of ranges. The proof relies on a refined analysis of tail estimates for hitting time and can be applied for other vertex-transitive graphs.
Our paper gives bounds for the rate of convergence for a class of random walks on the d-dimensional torus generated by a set of n vectors in R^d/Z^d. We give bounds on the discrepancy distance from Haar measure; our lower bound holds for all such walks, and if the generators arise from the rows of a "badly approximable" matrix, then there is a corresponding upper bound. The bounds are sharp for walks on the circle.
We study the mixing time of a random walk on the torus, alternated with a Lebesgue measure preserving Bernoulli map. Without the Bernoulli map, the mixing time of the random walk alone is $O(1/ε^2)$, where $ε$ is the step size. Our main results show that for a class of Bernoulli maps, when the random walk is alternated with the Bernoulli map $φ$ the mixing time becomes $O(|\ln ε|)$. We also study the \emph{dissipation time} of this process, and obtain $O(|\ln ε|)$ upper and lower bounds with explicit constants.
We examine escape and entrance times, Green's functions, local times, and hitting distributions of discs and annuli of a symmetric random walk on $\Z^2$ projected onto the periodic lattice $\Z^2_K$. This extends a framework for the simple planar random walk in Dembo, et al. (2006) to the large class of planar random walks in Bass, Rosen (2007). The approach uses comparisons between $\Z^2$ and $\Z^2_K$ hitting times and distributions on annuli, and uses only random walk methods.
Let x and y be points chosen uniformly at random from $\Z_n^4$, the four-dimensional discrete torus with side length n. We show that the length of the loop-erased random walk from x to y is of order $n^2 (\log n)^{1/6}$, resolving a conjecture of Benjamini and Kozma. We also show that the scaling limit of the uniform spanning tree on $\Z_n^4$ is the Brownian continuum random tree of Aldous. Our proofs use the techniques developed by Peres and Revelle, who studied the scaling limits of the uniform spanning tree on a large class of finite graphs that includes the d-dimensional discrete torus for…
For a general class of percolation models with long-range correlations on $\mathbb Z^d$, $d\geq 2$, introduced in arXiv:1212.2885, we establish regularity conditions of Barlow arXiv:math/0302004 that mesoscopic subballs of all large enough balls in the unique infinite percolation cluster have regular volume growth and satisfy a weak Poincaré inequality. As immediate corollaries, we deduce quenched heat kernel bounds, parabolic Harnack inequality, and finiteness of the dimension of harmonic functions with at most polynomial growth. Heat kernel bounds and the quenched invariance principle of arX…
Consider the subgraph of the discrete $d$-dimensional torus of size length $N$, $d\ge3$, induced by the range of the simple random walk on the torus run until the time $uN^d$. We prove that for all $d\ge 3$ and $u>0$, the mixing time for the random walk on this subgraph is of order $N^2$ with probability at least $1 - Ce^{-(\log N)^2}$.
This work continues the investigation, initiated in a recent work by Benjamini and Sznitman, of percolative properties of the set of points not visited by a random walk on the discrete torus (Z/NZ)^d up to time uN^d in high dimension d. If u>0 is chosen sufficiently small it has been shown that with overwhelming probability this vacant set contains a unique giant component containing segments of length c_0 log N for some constant c_0 > 0, and this component occupies a non-degenerate fraction of the total volume as N tends to infinity. Within the same setup, we investigate here the complement o…
