This work introduces the notion of edge oriented reinforced random walk which proposes in a general framework an alternative understanding of the annealed law of random walks in random environment.
Consider a walker performing a random walk in an i.i.d. random environment, and assume that the walker tells us at each time the environment it sees at its present location. Given this history of the transition probabilities seen from the walker - but not its trajectory - can we tell if the RWRE is recurrent or transient? Can we reconstruct the law of the environment? We show that in a one-dimensional environment, the law of the environment can be reconstructed, and we know in particular if the RWRE is recurrent or transient.
We study the behavior of Random Walk in Random Environment (RWRE) on trees in the critical case left open in previous work. Representing the random walk by an electrical network, we assume that the ratios of resistances of neighboring edges of a tree Gamma are i.i.d.random variables whose logarithms have mean zero and finite variance. Then the resulting RWRE is transient if simple random walk on Gamma is transient, but not vice versa. We obtain general transience criteria for such walks, which are sharp for symmetric trees of polynomial growth. In order to prove these criteria, we establish re…
This work is motivated by the study of some two-dimensional random walks in random environment (RWRE) with transition probabilities independent of one coordinate of the walk. These are non-reversible models and can not be treated by electrical network techniques. The proof of the recurrence of such RWRE needs new estimates for quenched return probabilities of a one-dimensional recurrent RWRE. We obtained these estimates by constructing suitable valleys for the potential. They imply that k independent walkers in the same one-dimensional (recurrent) environment will meet in the origin infinitely…
This thesis concerns the study of random walks in random environments (RWRE). Since there are two levels of randomness for random walks in random environments, there are two different distributions for the random walk that can be studied. The quenched distribution is the law of the random walk conditioned on a given environment. The annealed distribution is the quenched law averaged over all environments. The main results of the thesis fall into two categories: quenched limiting distributions for one-dimensional, transient RWRE and annealed large deviations for multidimensional RWRE. The analy…
We consider a random walk in a random environment (RWRE) on the strip of finite width $\mathbb{Z} \times \{1,2,\ldots,d\}$. We prove both quenched and averaged large deviation principles for the position and the hitting times of the RWRE. Moreover, we prove a variational formula that relates the quenched and averaged rate functions, thus extending a result of Comets, Gantert, and Zeitouni for nearest-neighbor RWRE on $\mathbb{Z}$
We consider a one-dimensional recurrent random walk in random environment (RWRE). We show that the - suitably centered - empirical distributions of the RWRE converge weakly to a certain limit law which describes the stationary distribution of a random walk in an infinite valley. The construction of the infinite valley goes back to Golosov. As a consequence, we show weak convergence for both the maximal local time and the self-intersection local time of the RWRE and also determine the exact constant in the almost sure upper limit of the maximal local time.
We give a new criterion for ballistic behavior of random walks in random environments which are low disorder perturbations of the simple symmetric random walk on $\mathbb{Z}^d$, for $d\geq 2$. This extends the results established by Sznitman in 2003 and, in particular, allow us to give new examples of ballistic RWREs in dimension $d=3$ which do not satisfy Kalikow's condition. Essentially, this new criterion states that ballisticity occurs whenever the average local drift of the walk is not too small when compared to the standard deviation of the environment. Its proof relies on applying coars…
We construct a two-dimensional counterexample of a random walk in random environment (RWRE). The environment is stationary, mixing and perturbative, and the corresponding RWRE has non-trivial probability to wander off to the upper right. This is in contrast to the 0-1-law that holds for i.i.d.\ environments.
Random walks in random environments (RWRE's) have been a source of surprising phenomena and challenging problems since they began to be studied in the 70's. Hitting times and, more recently, certain regeneration structures, have played a major role in our understanding of RWRE's. We review these and provide some hints on current research directions and challenges.
Kesten et al.( 1975) proved the stable law for the transient RWRE (here we refer it as the $κ$-transient RWRE). After that, some similar interesting properties have also been revealed for its continuous counterpart, the diffusion proces in a Brownian environment with drift $κ$. In the present paper we will investigate the connections between these two kind of models, i.e., we will construct a sequence of the $κ$-transient RWREs and prove it convergence to the diffusion proces in a Brownian environment with drift $κ$ by proper scaling. To this end, we need a counterpart convergence for the $κ$-…
In this thesis, we study the diffusive and ballistic behaviors of random walk in random environment (RWRE) in an integer lattice with dimension at least 2. Our contributions are in three directions: a conditional law of large numbers and regeneration structures for RWRE in Gibbsian environments, quenched invariance principles for balanced elliptic (but non uniformly elliptic) environments, and a proof of the Einstein relation for balanced iid uniformly elliptic environments.
We will investigate a random mass splitting model and the closely related random walk in a random environment (RWRE). The heat kernel for the RWRE at time t is the mass splitting distribution at t. We prove a quenched invariance principle for the RWRE which gives us a quenched central limit theorem for the mass splitting model. Our RWRE has an environment which is changing with time. We follow the outline for proving a quenched invariant process for a random walk in a space-time random environment laid out by Rassoul-Agha and Seppäläinen which in turn was based on the work of Kipnis and Varadh…
In 2003, Varadhan [V03] developed a robust method for proving quenched and averaged large deviations for random walks in a uniformly elliptic and i.i.d. environment (RWRE) on $\mathbb Z^d$. One fundamental question which remained open was to determine when the quenched and averaged large deviation rate functions agree, and when they do not. In this article we show that for RWRE in uniformly elliptic and i.i.d. environment in $d\geq 4$, the two rate functions agree on any compact set contained in the interior of their domain which does not contain the origin, provided that the disorder of the e…
In this paper we study the property of asymptotic direction for random walks in random i.i.d. environments (RWRE). We prove that if the set of directions where the walk is transient is non empty and open, the walk admits an asymptotic direction. The main tool to obtain this result is the construction of a renewal structure with cones. We also prove that RWRE admits at most two opposite asymptotic directions.
This is the third in a series of papers in which we consider one-dimensional Random Walk in Cooling Random Environment (RWCRE). The latter is obtained by starting from one-dimensional Random Walk in Random Environment (RWRE) and resampling the environment along a sequence of deterministic times, called refreshing times. In the present paper we explore two questions for general refreshing times. First, we investigate how the recurrence versus transience criterion known for RWRE changes for RWCRE. Second, we explore the fluctuations for RWCRE when RWRE is either recurrent or satisfies a classica…
Unlike classical simple random walks, one-dimensional random walks in random environments (RWRE) are known to have a wide array of potential limiting distributions. Under certain assumptions, however, it is known that CLT-like limiting distributions hold for the walk under both the quenched and averaged measures. We give upper bounds on the rates of convergence for the quenched central limit theorems for both the hitting time and position of the RWRE with polynomial rates of convergence that depend on the distribution on environments.
In this article, we consider the speed of the random walks in a (uniformly elliptic and i.i.d.) random environment (RWRE) under perturbation. We obtain the derivative of the speed of the RWRE w.r.t. the perturbation, under the assumption that one of the following holds: (i) the environment is balanced and the perturbation satisfies a Kalikow-type ballisticity condition, (ii) the environment satisfies Sznitman's ballisticity condition. This is a generalized version of the Einstein relation for RWRE. Our argument is based on a modification of Lebowitz-Rost's argument developed in [Stochastic Pro…
It is conjectured that in dimensions $d\ge 2$ any random walk in an i.i.d. uniformly elliptic random environment (RWRE) which is directionally transient is ballistic. The ballisticity conditions for RWRE somehow interpolate between directional transience and ballisticity and have served to quantify the gap which would need to be proven in order to answer affirmatively this conjecture. Two important ballisticity conditions introduced by Sznitman \cite{Sz02} in 2001 and 2002 are the so called conditions $(T')$ and $(T)$: given a slab of width $L$ orthogonal to $l$, condition $(T')$ in direction …
We apply the techniques developed in Comets and Popov (2003) to present a new proof to Sinai's theorem (Sinai, 1982) on one-dimensional random walk in random environment (RWRE), working in a scale-free way to avoid rescaling arguments and splitting the proof in two independent parts: a quenched one, related to the measure $P_ω$ conditioned on a fixed, typical realization $ω$ of the environment, and an annealed one, related to the product measure $\mathbb{P}$ of the environment $ω$. The quenched part still holds even if we use another measure (possibly dependent) for the environment.
We study a random walk in a random environment (RWRE) on $\Z^d$, $1 \leq d < +\infty$. The main assumptions are that conditionned on the environment the random walk is reversible. Moreover we construct our environment in such a way that the walk can't be trapped on a single point like in some particular RWRE but in some specific d-1 surfaces. These surfaces are basic surfaces with deterministic geometry. We prove that the local time in the neighborhood of these surfaces is driven by a function of the (random) reversible measure. As an application we get the limit law of the local time as a pro…
We show that a sequence of birth-and-death chains, given by lazy random walks in a (transient) environment (RWRE) on [0; n], exhibits a cutoff in the ballistic regime but does not exhibit a cutoff in the (interior of) the subballistic regime. We investigate the growth of the mixing times for this model. As an important step in the proof, we derive bounds for the quenched expectation and the quenched variance of the hitting times of the RWRE, which are of independent interest.
We focus on recurrent random walks in random environment (RWRE) on Galton-Watson trees. The range of these walks, that is the number of sites visited at some fixed time, has been studied in three different papers [AC18], [AdR17] and [dR16]. Here we study the heavy range: the number of edges visited at least $α$ times for some integer $α$. The asymptotic behavior of this process when $α$ is a power of the number of steps of the walk is given for all the recurrent cases. It turns out that this heavy range plays a crucial role in the rate of convergence of an estimator of the environment from a s…
Random walk in random environment (RWRE) is a fundamental model of statistical mechanics, describing the movement of a particle in a highly disordered and inhomogeneous medium as a random walk with random jump probabilities. It has been introduced in a series of papers by Chernov and Temkin as a model for DNA chain replication and crystal growth, and also as a model for turbulent behavior in fluids through a Lorentz gas description by Sinai. It is a simple but powerful model for a variety of complex large-scale disordered phenomena arising from fields such as physics, biology and engineering. …
We study the strong form of the ballistic conjecture for random walks in random environments (RWRE). This conjecture asserts that any RWRE which is directionally transient for a nonempty open set of directions satisfies condition $(T)$ (annealed exponential decay for the unlikely exit probability). Specifically, we introduce a ballisticity condition which is fulfilled as soon as a polynomial condition of degree greater than $d-1$ holds. Under that hypothesis we prove condition $(T)$, which turns this condition into the weakest-known ballisticity assumption. We recall that standard arguments to…
We take the point of view of the particle in a multidimensional nearest neighbor random walk in random environment (RWRE). We prove a quenched large deviation principle and derive a variational formula for the quenched rate function. Most of the previous results in this area rely on the subadditive ergodic theorem. We employ a different technique which is based on a minimax theorem. Large deviation principles for RWRE have been proven for i.i.d. nestling environments subject to a moment condition and for ergodic uniformly elliptic environments. We assume only that the environment is ergodic an…
We consider the transition probabilities for random walks in $1+1$ dimensional space-time random environments (RWRE). For critically tuned weak disorder we prove a sharp large deviation result: after appropriate rescaling, the transition probabilities for the RWRE evaluated in the large deviation regime, converge to the solution to the stochastic heat equation (SHE) with multiplicative noise (the logarithm of which is the KPZ equation). We apply this to the exactly solvable Beta RWRE and additionally present a formal derivation of the convergence of certain moment formulas for that model to th…
We consider one infinite path of a Random Walk in Random Environment (RWRE, for short) in an unknown environment. This environment consists of either i.i.d.\ site or bond randomness. At each position the random walker stops and tells us the environment it sees at the point where it is, without telling us, where it is. These observations $χ'$ are spoiled by reading errors that occur with probability $p<1$. We show: If the RWRE is recurrent and satisfies the standard assumptions on such RWREs, then with probability one in the environment, the errors, and the random walk we are able reconstruct t…
We consider a system of independent random walks in a common random environment. Previously, a hydrodynamic limit for the system of RWRE was proved under the assumption that the random walks were transient with positive speed. In this paper we instead consider the case where the random walks are transient but with a sublinear speed of the order $n^κ$ for some $κ\in (0,1)$ and prove a quenched hydrodynamic limit for the system of random walks with time scaled by $n^{1/κ}$ and space scaled by $n$. The most interesting feature of the hydrodynamic limit is that the influence of the environment doe…
We consider a random walk in a uniformly elliptic i.i.d. random environment in $\mathbb Z^d$ for $d\ge 2$. It is believed that whenever the random walk is transient in a given direction it is necessarily ballistic. In order to quantify the gap which would be needed to prove this equivalence, several ballisticity conditions have been introduced. In particular, in 2001 and 2002, Sznitman defined the so called conditions $(T)$ and $(T')$. The first one is the requirement that certain unlikely exit probabilities from a set of slabs decay exponentially fast with their width $L$. The second one is t…
In this paper, we consider the linearly reinforced and the once-reinforced random walk models in the transient phase on trees. We show the large deviations for the upper tails for both models. We also show the exponential decay for the lower tail in the once-reinforced random walk model. On the other hand, the lower tail is in polynomial decay for the linearly reinforced random walk model.
We give two variational formulas (qVar1) and (qVar2) for the quenched free energy of a random walk in random potential (RWRP) when (i) the underlying walk is directed or undirected, (ii) the environment is stationary and ergodic, and (iii) the potential is allowed to depend on the next step of the walk which covers random walk in random environment (RWRE). In the directed i.i.d. case, we also give two variational formulas (aVar1) and (aVar2) for the annealed free energy of RWRP. These four formulas are the same except that they involve infima over different sets, and the first two are modified…
A universality property for large deviations of RWRE close to the axis
Fac. Cs. Exactas y Naturales, Universidad de Buenos Aires and IMAS UBA-CONICET(布宜诺斯艾利斯大学理学院与自然科学系及IMAS UBA-CONICET);NYU-ECNU Institute of Mathematical Sciences at NYU Shanghai(纽约大学上海校区纽约-华东师范大学数学科学研究所);Facultad de Matemáticas, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile(智利天主教公立大学数学学院)
We consider a Random Walk in Random Environment (RWRE) moving in an i.i.d.\ random field of obstacles. When the particle hits an obstacle, it disappears with a positive probability. We obtain quenched and annealed bounds on the tails of the survival time in the general $d$-dimensional case. We then consider a simplified one-dimensional model (where transition probabilities and obstacles are independent and the RWRE only moves to neighbour sites), and obtain finer results for the tail of the survival time. In addition, we study also the "mixed" probability measures (quenched with respect to the…
We study once-reinforced random walk (ORRW) on $\mathbb Z$. For this model, we derive limit results on all moments of its range using Tauberian theory.
In this short paper, we consider the Once-reinforced random walk with reinforcement parameter $a$ on trees with bounded degree which are transient for the simple random walk. On each of these trees, we prove that there exists an explicit critical parameter $a_0$ such that the Once-reinforced random walk is almost surely recurrent if $a>a_0$ and almost surely transient if $a<a_0$. This provides the first examples of phase transition for the Once-reinforced random walk.
Random Walks in Cooling Random Environments (RWCRE) is a model of random walks in dynamic random environments where the entire environment is resampled along a fixed sequence of times, called the "cooling sequence," and is kept fixed in between those times. This model interpolates between that of a homogenous random walk, where the environment is reset at every step, and Random Walks in (static) Random Environments (RWRE), where the environment is never resampled. In this work we focus on the limiting distributions of one-dimensional RWCRE in the regime where the fluctuations of the correspond…
We consider Reinforced Random Walks where transition probabilities are a function of the proportion of times the walk has traversed an edge. We give conditions for recurrence or transience. A phase transition is observed, similar to Pemantle \cite{Pem000} on trees.
The range of once-reinforced random walk on the half-line
College of Mathematics, Sichuan University(四川大学数学学院);School of Mathematical Sciences, Chengdu University of Technology(成都理工大学数学科学学院);Department of Mathematics, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign(伊利诺伊大学厄巴纳-香槟分校数学系)
We prove that any vertex-reinforced random walk on the integer lattice with non-decreasing reinforcement sequence $w$ satisfying $w(k) = o(k^α)$ for some $α< 1/2$ is recurrent. This improves on previous results of Volkov (2006) and Schapira (2012).
This paper studies the behavior of RWRE on trees in the critical case left open in previous work. For trees of exponential growth, a random perturbation of the transition probabilities can change a transient random walk into a recurrent one. This is the opposite of what occurs on trees of sub-exponential growth.
We consider a vertex reinforced random walk on the integer lattice with sub-linear reinforcement. Under some assumptions on the regular variation of the weight function, we characterize whether the walk gets stuck on a finite interval. When this happens, we estimate the size of the localization set. In particular, we show that, for any odd number $N$ larger than or equal to 5, there exists a vertex reinforced random walk which localizes with positive probability on exactly $N$ consecutive sites.
An intrinsic multitype branching structure within the transient (1;R)-RWRE is revealed. The branching structure enables us to specify the density of the absolutely continuous invariant measure for the environments seen from the particle and reprove the LLN with an drift explicitly in terms of the environment, comparing with the results in Brémont (2002).
We prove that vertex-reinforced random walk on the integers with weight of order k to the power alpha, for alpha in [0, 1/2), is recurrent. This confirms a conjecture of Volkov for alpha<1/2. The conjecture for alpha in [1/2, 1) remains open.
We consider a generalized version of a directionally reinforced random walk, which was originally introduced by Mauldin, Monticino, and von Weizsäcker in \cite{drw}. Our main result is a stable limit theorem for the position of the random walk in higher dimensions. This extends a result of Horváth and Shao \cite{limits} that was previously obtained in dimension one only (however, in a more stringent functional form).
A spider consists of several, say $N$, particles. Particles can jump independently according to a random walk if the movement does not violate some given restriction rules. If the movement violates a rule it is not carried out. We consider random walk in random environment (RWRE) on $\Z$ as underlying random walk. We suppose the environment $ω=(ω_x)_{x \in \Z}$ to be elliptic, with positive drift and nestling, so that there exists a unique positive constant $κ$ such that $\E[((1-ω_0)/ω_0)^κ]=1$. The restriction rules are kept very general; we only assume transitivity and irreducibility of the …
We continue the investigation of the localization phenomenon for a Vertex Reinforced Random Walk on the integer lattice. We provide some partial results towards a full characterization of the weights for which localization on 5 sites occurs with positive probability, and make some conjecture concerning the almost sure behavior.
We study Vertex-Reinforced-Random-Walk on the complete graph with weights of the form $w(n)=n^α$, with $α>1$. Unlike for the Edge-Reinforced-Random-Walk, which in this case localizes a.s. on 2 sites, here we observe various phase transitions, and in particular localization on arbitrary large sets is possible, provided $α$ is close enough to 1. Our proof relies on stochastic approximation techniques. At the end of the paper, we also prove a general result ensuring that any strongly reinforced VRRW on any bounded degree graph localizes a.s. on a finite subgraph.
In this article we establish for the superdiffusive regime $p \in (1/2,1)$ that the fluctuations of a general step-reinforced random walk around $a_n \hat{W}$, where $(a_n)_{n \in \mathbb{N}}$ is a non-negative sequence of order $n^p$ and $\hat{W}$ is a non-degenerate random variable, is Gaussian. This extends a known result by Kubota and Takei for the elephant random walk to the more general setting of step-reinforced random walks. Further, we provide an application of the asymptotic normality of $\hat{S}$ around $a_n \hat{W}$ to reinforced empirical processes as studied recently by Bertoin, …
We consider a linearly edge-reinforced random walk on a class of two-dimensional graphs with constant initial weights. The graphs are obtained from $\mathbb{Z}^2$ by replacing every edge by a sufficiently large, but fixed number of edges in series. We prove that the linearly edge-reinforced random walk on these graphs is recurrent. Furthermore, we derive bounds for the probability that the edge-reinforced random walk hits the boundary of a large box before returning to its starting point.
In this note we present a simplified proof of the zero-one law by Merkl and Zerner (2001) for directional transience of random walks in i.i.d. random environments (RWRE) on the square lattice. Also, we indicate how to construct a two-dimensional counterexample in a non-uniformly elliptic and stationary environment which has better ergodic properties than the example given by Merkl and Zerner.
Using an approximation by a set-valued dynamical system, this paper studies a class of non Markovian and non homogeneous stochastic processes on a finite state space. It provides an unified approach to simulated annealing type processes. It permits to study new models of vertex reinforced random walks and new models of learning in games including Markovian fictitious play.