We study exceptional sets of the local time of the continuous-time simple random walk in scaled-up (by $N$) versions $D_N\subseteq \mathbb Z^2$ of bounded open domains $D\subseteq \mathbb R^2$. Upon exit from $D_N$, the walk lands on a "boundary vertex" and then reenters $D_N$ through a random boundary edge in the next step. In the parametrization by the local time at the "boundary vertex" we prove that, at times corresponding to a $θ$-multiple of the cover time of $D_N$, the sets of suitably defined $λ$-thick (i.e., heavily visited) and $λ$-thin (i.e., lightly visited) points are, as $N\to\infty$, distributed according to the Liouville Quantum Gravity $Z^D_λ$ with parameter $λ$-times the critical value. For $θ<1$, also the set of avoided vertices (a.k.a. late points) and the set where the local time is of order unity are distributed according to $Z^D_{\sqrtθ}$. The local structure of the exceptional sets is described as well, and is that of a pinned Discrete Gaussian Free Field for the thick and thin points and that of random-interlacement occupation-time field for the avoided points. The results demonstrate universality of the Gaussian Free Field for these extremal problems.
We define a dynamical simple symmetric random walk in one dimension, and show that there almost surely exist exceptional times at which the walk tends to infinity. This is in contrast to the usual dynamical simple symmetric random walk in one dimension, for which such exceptional times are known not to exist. In fact we show that the set of exceptional times has Hausdorff dimension $1/2$ almost surely, and give bounds on the rate at which the walk diverges at such times. We also show noise sensitivity of the event that our random walk is positive after $n$ steps. In fact this event is maximall…
The dynamical discrete web (DDW), introduced in recent work of Howitt and Warren, is a system of coalescing simple symmetric one-dimensional random walks which evolve in an extra continuous dynamical parameter s. The evolution is by independent updating of the underlying Bernoulli variables indexed by discrete space-time that define the discrete web at any fixed s. In this paper, we study the existence of exceptional (random) values of s where the paths of the web do not behave like usual random walks and the Hausdorff dimension of the set of such exceptional s. Our results are motivated by th…
If $\mathcal{W}$ is the simple random walk on the square lattice $\mathbb{Z}^2$, then $\mathcal{W}$ induces a random walk $\mathcal{W}_G$ on any spanning subgraph $G\subset \mathbb{Z}^2$ of the lattice as follows: viewing $\mathcal{W}$ as a uniformly random infinite word on the alphabet $\{\mathbf{x}, -\mathbf{x}, \mathbf{y}, -\mathbf{y} \}$, the walk $\mathcal{W}_G$ starts at the origin and follows the directions specified by $\mathcal{W}$, only accepting steps of $\mathcal{W}$ along which the walk $\mathcal{W}_G$ does not exit $G$. For any fixed subgraph $G \subset \mathbb{Z}^2$, the walk $\…
Benjamini,Haggstrom, Peres and Steif introduced the model of dynamical random walk on Z^d. This is a continuum of random walks indexed by a parameter t. They proved that for d=3,4 there almost surely exist t such that the random walk at time t visits the origin infinitely often, but for d > 4 there almost surely do not exist such t. Hoffman showed that for d=2 there almost surely exists t such that the random walk at time t visits the origin only finitely many times. We refine the results of Hoffman for dynamical random walk on Z^2, showing that with probability one there are times when the or…
The dynamical discrete web (DyDW),introduced in recent work of Howitt and Warren, is a system of coalescing simple symmetric one-dimensional random walks which evolve in an extra continuous dynamical time parameter τ. The evolution is by independent updating of the underlying Bernoulli variables indexed by discrete space-time that define the discrete web at any fixed τ. In this paper, we study the existence of exceptional (random) values of τwhere the paths of the web do not behave like usual random walks and the Hausdorff dimension of the set of exceptional such τ. Our results are motivated b…
The dynamical discrete web is a system of one-dimensional coalescing random walks that evolves in an extra dynamical time parameter. At any deterministic dynamical time, the paths behave as coalescing simple symmetric random walks. This paper studies the existence of (random) exceptional dynamical times at which the paths violate certain almost sure properties of random walks. It was shown in 2009 by Fontes, Newman, Ravishankar and Schertzer that there exist exceptional times at which the path starting from the origin violates the law of the iterated logarithm. Their results gave exceptional t…
Benjamini, Haggstrom, Peres and Steif introduced the concept of a dynamical random walk. This is a continuous family of random walks, {S_n(t)}. Benjamini et. al. proved that if d=3 or d=4 then there is an exceptional set of t such that {S_n(t)} returns to the origin infinitely often. In this paper we consider a dynamical random walk on Z^2. We show that with probability one there exists t such that {S_n(t)} never returns to the origin. This exceptional set of times has dimension one. This proves a conjecture of Benjamini et. al.
We consider random walk on the structure given by a random hypergraph in the regime where there is a unique giant component. We give the asymptotics for hitting times, cover times, and commute times and show that the results obtained for random walk on random graphs are universal.
Consider a sequence {X(i,0) : i = 1, ..., n} of i.i.d. random variables. Associate to each X(i,0) an independent mean-one Poisson clock. Every time a clock rings replace that X-variable by an independent copy. In this way, we obtain i.i.d. stationary processes {X(i,t) : t >= 0} (i=1,2, ...) whose invariant distribution is the law of X(1,0). Benjamini, Haggstrom, Peres, and Steif (2003) introduced the dynamical walk S(n,t) = X(1,t) + ... + X(n,t), and proved among other things that the LIL holds for {S(n,t) : n =1,2, ...} simultaneously for all t. In other words, the LIL is dynamically stable. …
We analyze the covertime of a biased random walk on the random graph $G_{n,p}$. The walk is biased towards visiting vertices of low degree and this makes the covertime less than in the unbiased case
In this paper, we study the time required for a λ-biased (λ>1) walk to visit all the vertices of a supercritical Galton-Watson tree up to generation n. Inspired by the extremal landscape approach in [Cortines, Louidor, Saglietti 2018] for the simple random walk on binary trees, we establish the scaling limit of the cover time in the biased setting.
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.
Directed covers of finite graphs are also known as periodic trees or trees with finitely many cone types. We expand the existing theory of directed covers of finite graphs to those of infinite graphs. While the lower growth rate still equals the branching number, upper and lower growth rates do not longer coincide in general. Furthermore, the behaviour of random walks on directed covers of infinite graphs is more subtle. We provide a classification in terms of recurrence and transience and point out that the critical random walk may be recurrent or transient. Our proof is based on the observat…
Let $T_n$ denote the binary tree of depth $n$ augmented by an extra edge connected to its root. Let $C_n$ denote the cover time of $T_n$ by simple random walk. We prove that $\sqrt{ \mathcal{C}_{n} 2^{-(n+1) } } - m_n$ converges in distribution as $n\to \infty$, where $m_n$ is an explicit constant, and identify the limit.
We consider the cover time for a simple random walk on the two-dimensional discrete torus of side length $n$. Dembo, Peres, Rosen, and Zeitouni [Ann. Math. 160:433-464, 2004] identified the leading term in the asymptotics for the cover time as $n$ goes to infinity. In this paper, we study the exact second order term. This is a discrete analogue of the work on the cover time for planar Brownian motion by Belius and Kistler [Probab. Theory Relat Fields. 167:461-552, 2017].
Let R_n be the radius of the largest disk covered after n steps of a simple random walk. We prove that almost surely limsup_{n \to \infty}(log R_n)^2/(log n log_3 n) = 1/4, where log_3 denotes 3 iterations of the log function. This is motivated by a question of Erdős and Taylor. We also obtain the analogous result for the Wiener sausage, refining a result of Meyre and Werner.
In this paper we study the probability that a $d$ dimensional simple random walk (or the first $L$ steps of it) covers each point in a nearest neighbor path connecting 0 and the boundary of an $L_1$ ball. We show that among all such paths, the one that maximizes the covering probability is the monotonic increasing one that stays within distance 1 from the diagonal. As a result, we can obtain an exponential upper bound on the decaying rate of covering probability of any such path when $d\ge 4$.
The rotor router model is a popular deterministic analogue of a random walk on a graph. Instead of moving to a random neighbor, the neighbors are served in a fixed order. We examine how fast this "deterministic random walk" covers all vertices (or all edges). We present general techniques to derive upper bounds for the vertex and edge cover time and derive matching lower bounds for several important graph classes. Depending on the topology, the deterministic random walk can be asymptotically faster, slower or equally fast as the classic random walk. We also examine the short term behavior of d…
We analyze a deterministic form of the random walk on the integer line called the {\em liar machine}, similar to the rotor-router model, finding asymptotically tight pointwise and interval discrepancy bounds versus random walk. This provides an improvement in the best-known winning strategies in the binary symmetric pathological liar game with a linear fraction of responses allowed to be lies. Equivalently, this proves the existence of adaptive binary block covering codes with block length $n$, covering radius $\leq fn$ for $f\in(0,1/2)$, and cardinality $O(\sqrt{\log \log n}/(1-2f))$ times th…
In the present paper, we study central limit theorems (CLTs) for non-symmetric random walks on nilpotent covering graphs from a point of view of discrete geometric analysis developed by Kotani and Sunada. We establish a semigroup CLT for a non-symmetric random walk on a nilpotent covering graph. Realizing the nilpotent covering graph into a nilpotent Lie group through a discrete harmonic map, we give a geometric characterization of the limit semigroup on the nilpotent Lie group. More precisely, we show that the limit semigroup is generated by the sub-Laplacian with a non-trivial drift on the n…
In the present paper, as a continuation of our preceding paper [10], we study another kind of central limit theorems (CLTs) for non-symmetric random walks on nilpotent covering graphs from a viewpoint of discrete geometric analysis developed by Kotani and Sunada. We introduce a one-parameter family of random walks which interpolates between the original non-symmetric random walk and the symmetrized one. We first prove a semigroup CLT for the family of random walks by realizing the nilpotent covering graph into a nilpotent Lie group via discrete harmonic maps. The limiting diffusion semigroup i…
In this paper we find an upper bound for the probability that a $3$ dimensional simple random walk covers each point in a nearest neighbor path connecting 0 and the boundary of an $L_1$ ball of radius $N$. For $d\ge 4$, it has been shown in [5] that such probability decays exponentially with respect to $N$. For $d=3$, however, the same technique does not apply, and in this paper we obtain a slightly weaker upper bound: $\forall \varepsilon>0,\exists c_\varepsilon>0,$ $$P\left({\rm Trace}(\mathcal{P})\subseteq {\rm Trace}\big(\{X_n\}_{n=0}^\infty\big) \right)\le \exp\left(-c_\varepsilon N\log^{…
Let $T$ be the regular tree in which every vertex has exactly $d\ge 3$ neighbours. Run a branching random walk on $T$, in which at each time step every particle gives birth to a random number of children with mean $d$ and finite variance, and each of these children moves independently to a uniformly chosen neighbour of its parent. We show that, starting with one particle at some vertex $0$ and conditionally on survival of the process, the time it takes for every vertex within distance $r$ of $0$ to be hit by a particle of the branching random walk is almost surely $r + \frac{2}{\log(3/2)}\log\…
The aim of this note is to extend the result of Angel and Holroyd concerning the transience and the recurrence of transfinite rotor-router walks, for random initial configuration of rotors on homogeneous trees. We address the same question on directed covers of finite graphs, which are also called trees with finitely many cone types or periodic trees. Furthermore, we provide an example of a directed cover such that the rotor-router walk can be either recurrent or transient, depending only on the planar embedding of the periodic tree.
Using the results of Ding, Lee, Peres [3], we develop formulas to compute the hitting times and cover times for random walks on groups. We developed an explicit formula for hitting times in terms of the irreducible representations of the group. We also have a way of computing cover times in terms of these hitting times. This computation is based on a quantity we indentified, which we call the volume growth function. And we believe that it is the right object to study in order to understand the cover time.
Let $G$ be a connected simple real Lie group, $Λ_{0}\subseteq G$ a lattice and $Λ\unlhd Λ_{0}$ a normal subgroup such that $Λ_{0}/Λ\simeq \mathbb{Z}^d$. We study the drift of a random walk on the $\mathbb{Z}^d$-cover $Λ\backslash G$ of the finite volume homogeneous space $Λ_{0}\backslash G$. This walk is defined by a Zariski-dense compactly supported probability measure $μ$ on $G$. We first assume the covering map $Λ\backslash G\rightarrow Λ_{0}\backslash G$ does not unfold any cusp of $Λ_{0}\backslash G$ and compute the drift at \emph{every} starting point. Then we remove this assumption and …
We revisit an old minor topic in algorithms, the deterministic walk on a finite graph which always moves toward the nearest unvisited vertex until every vertex is visited. There is an elementary connection between this cover time and ball-covering (metric entropy) measures. For some familiar models of random graphs, this connection allows the order of magnitude of the cover time to be deduced from first passage percolation estimates. Establishing sharper results seems a challenging problem.
A simple random walk on a graph is a sequence of movements from one vertex to another where at each step an edge is chosen uniformly at random from the set of edges incident on the current vertex, and then transitioned to next vertex. Central to this thesis is the cover time of the walk, that is, the expectation of the number of steps required to visit every vertex, maximised over all starting vertices. In our first contribution, we establish a relation between the cover times of a pair of graphs, and the cover time of their Cartesian product. This extends previous work on special cases of the…
The harmonic measure $ν$ on the boundary of the group $Sol$ associated to a discrete random walk of law $μ$ was described by Kaimanovich. We investigate when it is absolutely continuous or singular with respect to Lebesgue measure. By ratio entropy over speed, we show that any countable non-abelian subgroup admits a finite first moment non-degenerate $μ$ with singular harmonic measure $ν$. On the other hand, we prove that some random walks with finitely supported step distribution admit a regular harmonic measure. Finally, we construct some exceptional random walks with arbitrarily small speed…
It is a fact simple to establish that the mixing time of the simple random walk on a d-regular graph $G_n$ with n vertices is asymptotically bounded from below by $d/ ((d-2)\log (d-1))\log n$. Such a bound is obtained by comparing the walk on $G_n$ to the walk on the infinite $d$-regular tree. If one can map another infinite transitive graph onto $G_n$, then we can improve the strategy by using a comparison with the random walk on this transitive graph (instead of that of the regular tree), and we obtain a lower bound of the form $1/h \log n$, where $h$ is the entropy rate associated with the …
We show that the largest disc covered by a simple random walk (SRW) on $\mathbb{Z}^2$ after n steps has radius n^{1/4+o(1)}, thus resolving an open problem of Révész [Random Walk in Random and Non-Random Environments (1990) World Scientific, Teaneck, NJ]. For any fixed $\ell$, the largest disc completely covered at least $\ell$ times by the SRW also has radius n^{1/4+o(1)}. However, the largest disc completely covered by each of $\ell$ independent simple random walks on $\mathbb{Z}^2$ after $n$ steps is only of radius $n^{1/(2+2\sqrt{\ell})+o(1)}$. We complement this by showing that the radius…
Moderate deviation principles (MDPs) for random walks on covering graphs with groups of polynomial volume growth are discussed in a geometric point of view. They deal with any intermediate spatial scalings between those of laws of large numbers and those of central limit theorems. The corresponding rate functions are given by quadratic forms determined by the Albanese metric associated with the given random walks. We apply MDPs to establish laws of the iterated logarithm on the covering graphs by characterizing the set of all limit points of the normalized random walks.
We pose a new and intriguing question motivated by distributed computing regarding random walks on graphs: How long does it take for several independent random walks, starting from the same vertex, to cover an entire graph? We study the cover time - the expected time required to visit every node in a graph at least once - and we show that for a large collection of interesting graphs, running many random walks in parallel yields a speed-up in the cover time that is linear in the number of parallel walks. We demonstrate that an exponential speed-up is sometimes possible, but that some natural gr…
The aim of this article is to study some asymptotics of a natural model of random ramified coverings on the disk of degree $N$. We prove that the monodromy field, called also the holonomy field, converges in probability to a non-random field as $N$ goes to infinity. In order to do so, we use the fact that the monodromy field of random uniform labelled simple ramified coverings on the disk of degree $N$ has the same law as the $\mathfrak{S}(N)$-Yang-Mills measure associated with the random walk by transposition on $\mathfrak{S}(N)$. This allows us to restrict our study to random walks on $\math…
Let T(x,r) denote the first hitting time of the disc of radius r centered at x for Brownian motion on the two dimensional torus. We prove that sup_{x} T(x,r)/|log r|^2 --> 2/pi as r --> 0. The same applies to Brownian motion on any smooth, compact connected, two-dimensional, Riemannian manifold with unit area and no boundary. As a consequence, we prove a conjecture, due to Aldous (1989), that the number of steps it takes a simple random walk to cover all points of the lattice torus Z_n^2 is asymptotic to (2n log n)^2/pi. Determining these asymptotics is an essential step toward analyzing the f…
We introduce a cover time problem for random walks on dynamic graphs in which the graph expands in time and the walker moves at random times. Time to cover all nodes and number of returns to original states are analyzed in resulting model.
We study the probability density function (PDF) of the cover time $t_c$ of a finite interval of size $L$, by $N$ independent one-dimensional Brownian motions, each with diffusion constant $D$. The cover time $t_c$ is the minimum time needed such that each point of the entire interval is visited by at least one of the $N$ walkers. We derive exact results for the full PDF of $t_c$ for arbitrary $N \geq 1$, for both reflecting and periodic boundary conditions. The PDFs depend explicitly on $N$ and on the boundary conditions. In the limit of large $N$, we show that $t_c$ approaches its average val…
There is a close connection between intersections of Brownian motion paths and percolation on trees. Recently, ideas from probability on trees were an important component of the multifractal analysis of Brownian occupation measure, in joint work with A. Dembo, J. Rosen and O. Zeitouni. As a consequence, we proved two conjectures about simple random walk in two dimensions: The first, due to Erdős and Taylor (1960), involves the number of visits to the most visited lattice site in the first $n$ steps of the walk. The second, due to Aldous (1989), concerns the number of steps it takes a simple ra…
For a simple (unbiased) random walk on a connected graph with $n$ vertices, the cover time (the expected number of steps it takes to visit all vertices) is at most $O(n^3)$. We consider locally biased random walks, in which the probability of traversing an edge depends on the degrees of its endpoints. We confirm a conjecture of Abdullah, Cooper and Draief [2015] that the min-degree local bias rule ensures a cover time of $O(n^2)$. For this we formulate and prove the following lemma about spanning trees. Let $R(e)$ denote for edge $e$ the minimum degree among its two endpoints. We say that a we…
We study quenched distributions on random walks in a random potential on integer lattices of arbitrary dimension and with an arbitrary finite set of admissible steps. The potential can be unbounded and can depend on a few steps of the walk. Directed, undirected and stretched polymers, as well as random walk in random environment, are covered. The restriction needed is on the moment of the potential, in relation to the degree of mixing of the ergodic environment. We derive two variational formulas for the limiting quenched free energy and prove a process-level quenched large deviation principle…
We study the biased random walk where at each step of a random walk a "controller" can, with a certain small probability, move the walk to an arbitrary neighbour. This model was introduced by Azar et al. [STOC'1992]; we extend their work to the time dependent setting and consider cover times of this walk. We obtain new bounds on the cover and hitting times. Azar et al. conjectured that the controller can increase the stationary probability of a vertex from $p$ to $p^{1-ε}$; while this conjecture is not true in full generality, we propose a best-possible amended version of this conjecture and c…
We consider a recurrent random walk (RW) in random environment (RE) on a strip. We prove that if the RE is i. i. d. and its distribution is not supported by an algebraic subsurface in the space of parameters defining the RE then the RW exhibits the "(log t)-squared" asymptotic behaviour. The exceptional algebraic subsurface is described by an explicit system of algebraic equations. One-dimensional walks with bounded jumps in a RE are treated as a particular case of the strip model. If the one dimensional RE is i. i. d., then our approach leads to a complete and constructive classification of p…
A survey is presented of known results concerning simple random walk on the class of distance-regular graphs. One of the highlights is that electric resistance and hitting times between points can be explicitly calculated and given strong bounds for, which leads in turn to bounds on cover times, mixing times, etc. Also discussed are harmonic functions, moments of hitting and cover times, the Green's function, and the cutoff phenomenon. The main goal of the paper is to present these graphs as a natural setting in which to study simple random walk, and to stimulate further research in the field.
Real networks are often dynamic. In response to it, analyses of algorithms on {\em dynamic networks} attract more and more attentions in network science and engineering. Random walks on dynamic graphs also have been investigated actively in more than a decade, where in most cases the edge set changes but the vertex set is static. The vertex sets are also dynamic in many real networks. Motivated by a new technology of the analysis of random walks on dynamic graphs, this paper introduces a simple model of graphs with increasing the number of vertices, and presents an analysis of random walks ass…
Elephant Random Walks on Coverings of Dipole Graphs
Faculty of Advanced Science and Technology, Kumamoto University（熊本大学先进科学技术学部）；Graduate School of Science and Technology, Kumamoto University（熊本大学理工学研究科）
Consider a sequence of i.i.d. random variables $X_n$ where each random variable is refreshed independently according to a Poisson clock. At any fixed time $t$ the law of the sequence is the same as for the sequence at time 0 but at random times almost sure properties of the sequence may be violated. If there are such \emph{exceptional times} we say that the property is \emph{dynamically sensitive}, otherwise we call it \emph{dynamically stable}. In this note we consider branching random walks on Cayley graphs and prove that recurrence and transience are dynamically stable in the sub-and superc…
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.
