We consider a random walk in the plane which takes steps uniformly distributed on the unit circle centered around the walker's current position but avoids the convex hull of its past positions. This model has been introduced by Angel, Benjamini and Virag. We show a large deviation estimate for the distance of the walker from the origin, which implies that the walker has positive lim inf speed.
We consider convex hulls of random walks whose steps belong to the domain of attraction of a stable law in $\mathbb{R}^d$. We prove convergence of the convex hull in the space of all convex and compact subsets of $\mathbb{R}^d$, equipped with the Hausdorff distance, towards the convex hull spanned by a path of the limit stable Lévy process. As an application, we establish convergence of (expected) intrinsic volumes under some mild moment/structure assumptions posed on the random walk.
We introduce planar random walk conditioned to avoid its past convex hull, and we show that it escapes at a positive limsup speed. Experimental results show that fluctuations from a limiting direction are on the order of n^(3/4). This behavior is also observed for the extremal investor, a natural financial model related to the planar walk.
For the perimeter length and the area of the convex hull of the first $n$ steps of a planar random walk, we study $n \to \infty$ mean and variance asymptotics and establish non-Gaussian distributional limits. Our results apply to random walks with drift (for the area) and walks with no drift (for both area and perimeter length) under mild moments assumptions on the increments. These results complement and contrast with previous work which showed that the perimeter length in the case with drift satisfies a central limit theorem. We deduce these results from weak convergence statements for the c…
We study the convex hull of the first $n$ steps of a planar random walk, and present large-$n$ asymptotic results on its perimeter length $L_n$, diameter $D_n$, and shape. In the case where the walk has a non-zero mean drift, we show that $L_n / D_n \to 2$ a.s., and give distributional limit theorems and variance asymptotics for $D_n$, and in the zero-drift case we show that the convex hull is infinitely often arbitrarily well-approximated in shape by any unit-diameter compact convex set containing the origin, and then $\liminf_{n \to \infty} L_n/D_n =2$ and $\limsup_{n \to \infty} L_n /D_n = …
We prove large deviations principles (LDPs) for the perimeter and the area of the convex hull of a planar random walk with finite Laplace transform of its increments. We give explicit upper and lower bounds for the rate function of the perimeter in terms of the rate function of the increments. These bounds coincide and thus give the rate function for a wide class of distributions which includes the Gaussians and the rotationally invariant ones. For random walks with such increments, large deviations of the perimeter are attained by the trajectories that asymptotically align into line segments.…
Denote by $L_n$ the length of the perimeter of the convex hull of $n$ steps of a planar random walk whose increments have finite second moment and non-zero mean. Snyder and Steele showed that $n^{-1} L_n$ converges almost surely to a deterministic limit, and proved an upper bound on the variance $Var [ L_n] = O(n)$. We show that $n^{-1} Var [L_n]$ converges and give a simple expression for the limit, which is non-zero for walks outside a certain degenerate class. This answers a question of Snyder and Steele. Furthermore, we prove a central limit theorem for $L_n$ in the non-degenerate case.
For the perimeter length $L_n$ and the area $A_n$ of the convex hull of the first $n$ steps of a planar random walk, this thesis study $n \to \infty$ mean and variance asymptotics and establish distributional limits. The results apply to random walks both with drift (the mean of random walk increments) and with no drift under mild moments assumptions on the increments. Assuming increments of the random walk have finite second moment and non-zero mean, Snyder and Steele showed that $n^{-1} L_n$ converges almost surely to a deterministic limit, and proved an upper bound on the variance Var$[ L_n…
Fix integers $d \geq 2$ and $k\geq d-1$. Consider a random walk $X_0, X_1, \ldots$ in $\mathbb{R}^d$ in which, given $X_0, X_1, \ldots, X_n$ ($n \geq k$), the next step $X_{n+1}$ is uniformly distributed on the unit ball centred at $X_n$, but conditioned that the line segment from $X_n$ to $X_{n+1}$ intersects the convex hull of $\{0, X_{n-k}, \ldots, X_n\}$ only at $X_n$. For $k = \infty$ this is a version of the model introduced by Angel et al., which is conjectured to be ballistic, i.e., to have a limiting speed and a limiting direction. We establish ballisticity for the finite-$k$ model, a…
Let $S_k$ be a random walk in $R^d$ such that its distribution of increments does not assign mass to hyperplanes. We study the probability $p_n$ that the convex hull $conv (S_1, \ldots , S_n)$ of the first $n$ steps of the walk does not include the origin. By providing an explicit formula, we show that for planar symmetrically distributed random walks, $p_n$ does not depend on the distribution of increments. This extends the well known result by Sparre Andersen (1949) that a one-dimensional random walk satisfying the above continuity and symmetry assumptions stays positive with a distribution-…
We connect this question to a problem of estimating the probability that the image of certain random matrices does not intersect with a subset of the unit sphere $\mathbb{S}^{n-1}$. In this way, the case of a discretized Brownian motion is related to Gordon's escape theorem dealing with standard Gaussian matrices. The approach allows us to prove that with high probability, the $π/2$-covering time of certain random walks on $\mathbb{S}^{n-1}$ is of order $n$. For certain spherical simplices on $\mathbb{S}^{n-1}$, we extend the "escape" phenomenon to a broad class of random matrices; as an appli…
We show that the `erasing-larger-loops-first' (ELLF) method, which was first introduced for erasing loops from the simple random walk on the Sierpinski gasket, does work also for non-Markov random walks, in particular, self-repelling walks to construct a new family of self-avoiding walks on the Sierpinski gasket. The one-parameter family constructed in this method continuously connects the loop-erased random walk and a self-avoiding walk which has the same asymptotic behavior as the `standard' self-avoiding walk. We prove the existence of the scaling limit and study some path properties: The e…
We study random convex cones defned as positive hulls of $d$-dimensional random walks and bridges. We compute expectations of various geometric functionals of these cones such as the number of $k$-dimensional faces and the sums of conic quermassintegrals of their $k$-dimensional faces. These expectations are expressed in terms of Stirling numbers of both kinds and their $B$-analogues.
We derive explicit formulae for the expected volume and the expected number of facets of the convex hull of several multidimensional Gaussian random walks in terms of the Gaussian persistence probabilities. Special cases include the already known results about the convex hull of a single Gaussian random walk and the $d$-dimensional Gaussian polytope with or without the origin.
Fluctuations for diameter and perimeter of convex hulls of multiple random walks
Institute of Mathematics, University of Wrocław（弗罗茨瓦夫大学数学研究所）；University of Zagreb Faculty of Science（萨格勒布大学理学院）；University of Zagreb Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing（萨格勒布大学电气工程和计算学院）；Department of Mathematical Sciences, Durham University（杜伦大学数学科学系）；Department of Mathematics, The University of Hong Kong（香港大学数学系）
We establish the Brownian bridge asymptotics for a scaled self-avoiding walk conditioned on arriving to a far away point $n \vec{a}$ for $\vec{a}$ in $Z^d$, as $n$ increases to infinity.
We prove error bounds in a central limit theorem for solutions of certain convolution equations. The main motivation for investigating these equations stems from applications to lace expansions, in particular to weakly self-avoiding random walks in high dimensions. As an application we treat such self-avoiding walks in continuous space. The bounds obtained are sharper than the ones obtained by other methods.
We consider self-avoiding walk on finite graphs with large girth. We study a few aspects of the model originally considered by Lawler, Schramm and Werner on finite balls in Z^d. The expected length of a random self avoiding path is considered. We also define a "critical exponent" $γ$ for sequences of graphs of size tending to infinity, and show that $γ= 1$ in the large girth case.
We consider the biased random walk on a tree constructed from the set of finite self-avoiding walks on a lattice, and use it to construct probability measures on infinite self-avoiding walks. The limit measure (if it exists) obtained when the bias converges to its critical value is conjectured to coincide with the weak limit of the uniform SAW. Along the way, we obtain a criterion for the continuity of the escape probability of a biased random walk on a tree as a function of the bias, and show that the collection of escape probability functions for spherically symmetric trees of bounded degree…
We consider the continuous time version of the `true' or `myopic' self-avoiding random walk with site repulsion in 1d. The Ray-Knight-type method which was applied to the discrete time and edge repulsion case, is applicable to this model with some modifications. We present a limit theorem for the local time of the walk and a local limit theorem for the displacement.
We consider self-avoiding walk on a tree with random conductances. It is proven that in the weak disorder regime, the quenched critical point is equal to the annealed one, and that in the strong disorder regime, these critical points are strictly different. Derrida and Spohn, and Baffet, Patrick and Pul$\acute{\rm e}$ give the exact value of the quenched critical point. We give another heuristic approach by the fractional moment estimate.
We study an annealed model of Uniform Infinite Planar Quadrangulation (UIPQ) with an infinite two-sided self-avoiding walk (SAW), which can also be described as the result of glueing together two independent uniform infinite quadrangulations of the half-plane (UIHPQs). We prove a lower bound on the displacement of the SAW which, combined with estimates from our previous paper, shows that the self-avoiding walk is diffusive. As a byproduct this implies that the volume growth exponent of the lattice in question is $4$ (as is the case for the standard UIPQ); nevertheless, using our previous work …
This article is concerned with self-avoiding walks (SAW) on $\mathbb{Z}^{d}$ that are subject to a self-attraction. The attraction, which rewards instances of adjacent parallel edges, introduces difficulties that are not present in ordinary SAW. Ueltschi has shown how to overcome these difficulties for sufficiently regular infinite-range step distributions and weak self-attractions. This article considers the case of bounded step distributions. For weak self-attractions we show that the connective constant exists, and, in $d\geq 5$, carry out a lace expansion analysis to prove the mean-field b…
In the present paper, we investigate the collapsed phase of the interacting partially-directed self-avoiding walk (IPDSAW) that was introduced in Zwanzig and Lauritzen (1968). We provide sharp asymptotics of the partition function inside the collapsed phase, proving rigorously a conjecture formulated in Guttmann (2015) and Owczarek et al. (1993). As a by-product of our result, we obtain that, inside the collapsed phase, a typical IPDSAW trajectory is made of a unique macroscopic bead, consisting of a concatenation of long vertical stretches of alternating signs, outside which only finitely man…
We survey some geometrical properties of trajectories of $d$-dimensional random walks via the application of functional limit theorems. We focus on the functional law of large numbers and functional central limit theorem (Donsker's theorem). For the latter, we survey the underlying weak convergence theory, drawing heavily on the exposition of Billingsley, but explicitly treat the multidimensional case. Our two main applications are to the convex hull of a random walk and the centre of mass process associated to a random walk. In particular, we establish the limit sets of the convex hull in the…
We give an explicit formula for the probability that the convex hull of an $n$-step random walk in $R^d$ does not contain the origin, under the assumption that the distribution of increments of the walk is centrally symmetric and puts no mass on affine hyperplanes. This extends the formula by Sparre Andersen (1949) for the probability that such random walk in dimension one stays positive. Our result is distribution-free, that is, the probability does not depend on the distribution of increments. This probabilistic problem is shown to be equivalent to either of the two geometric ones: 1) Find t…
The strong interaction limit of the discrete-time weakly self-avoiding walk (or Domb--Joyce model) is trivially seen to be the usual strictly self-avoiding walk. For the continuous-time weakly self-avoiding walk, the situation is more delicate, and is clarified in this paper. The strong interaction limit in the continuous-time setting depends on how the fugacity is scaled, and in one extreme leads to the strictly self-avoiding walk, in another to simple random walk. These two extremes are interpolated by a new model of a self-repelling walk that we call the "quick step" model. We study the lim…
A self-avoiding walk with small attractive interactions is described here. The existence of the connective constant is established, and the diffusive behavior is proved using the method of the lace expansion.
While completely self-avoiding quantum walks have the distinct property of leading to a trivial unidirectional transport of a quantum state, an interesting and non-trivial dynamics can be constructed by restricting the self-avoidance to a subspace of the complete Hilbert space. Here, we present a comprehensive study of three two-dimensional quantum walks, which are self-avoiding in coin space, in position space and in both, coin and position space. We discuss the properties of these walks and show that all result in delocalisation of the probability distribution for initial states which are st…
This is an exposition of the theorem from the title, which says that the number of self-avoiding walks with n steps in the hexagonal lattice has asymptotics (2cos(pi/8))^{n+o(n)}. We lift the key identity to formal level and simplify the part of the proof bounding the growth constant from below. In our calculation the lower bound comes from an identity asserting that a linear combination of 288 generating functions counting self-avoiding walks in a certain domain by length, final edge direction and winding number modulo 48 equals the geometric series 2cos(pi/8)x + (2cos(pi/8))^2x^2 + ... .
There is an extensive literature concerning self-avoiding walk on infinite graphs, but the subject is relatively undeveloped on finite graphs. The purpose of this paper is to elucidate the phase transition for self-avoiding walk on the simplest finite graph: the complete graph. We make the elementary observation that the susceptibility of the self-avoiding walk on the complete graph is given exactly in terms of the incomplete gamma function. The known asymptotic behaviour of the incomplete gamma function then yields a complete description of the finite-size scaling of the self-avoiding walk on…
We show that if the three dimensional self-avoiding walk (SAW) is conformally invariant, then one can compute the hitting densities for the SAW in a half space and in a sphere. We test these predictions by Monte Carlo simulations and find excellent agreement, thus providing evidence that the SAW is conformally invariant in three dimensions.
Let $μ$ be the self-avoiding walk connective constant on $\ZZ^d$. We show that the asymptotic expansion for $β_c=1/μ$ in powers of $1/(2d)$ satisfies Borel type bounds. This supports the conjecture that the expansion is Borel summable.
We consider random self-avoiding walks between two points on the boundary of a finite subdomain of Z^d (the probability of a self-avoiding trajectory gamma is proportional to mu^{-length(gamma)}). We show that the random trajectory becomes space-filling in the scaling limit when the parameter mu is supercritical.
We prove that the scaling limit of the weakly self-avoiding walk on a $d$-dimensional discrete torus is Brownian motion on the continuum torus if the length of the rescaled walk is $o(V^{1/2})$ where $V$ is the volume (number of points) of the torus and if $d>4$. We also prove that the diffusion constant of the resulting torus Brownian motion is the same as the diffusion constant of the scaling limit of the usual weakly self-avoiding walk on $\mathbb{Z}^d$. This provides further manifestation of the fact that the weakly self-avoiding walk model on the torus does not feel that it is on the toru…
We prove that for the $d$-regular tessellations of the hyperbolic plane by $k$-gons, there are exponentially more self-avoiding walks of length $n$ than there are self-avoiding polygons of length $n$. We then prove that this property implies that the self-avoiding walk is ballistic, even on an arbitrary vertex-transitive graph. Moreover, for every fixed $k$, we show that the connective constant for self-avoiding walks satisfies the asymptotic expansion $d-1-O(1/d)$ as $d\to \infty$; on the other hand, the connective constant for self-avoiding polygons remains bounded. Finally, we show for all …
The self-avoiding walk, and lattice spin systems such as the $φ^4$ model, are models of interest both in mathematics and in physics. Many of their important mathematical problems remain unsolved, particularly those involving critical exponents. We survey some of these problems, and report on recent advances in their mathematical understanding via a rigorous nonperturbative renormalization group method.
Following similar analysis to that in Lacoin (PTRF 159, 777-808, 2014), we can show that the quenched critical point for self-avoiding walk on random conductors on the d-dimensional integer lattice is almost surely a constant, which does not depend on the location of the reference point. We provide its upper and lower bounds that are valid for all dimensions.
Let $ξ_1,ξ_2,\ldots$ be a sequence of independent copies of a random vector in $\mathbb R^d$ having an absolutely continuous distribution. Consider a random walk $S_i:=ξ_1+\cdots+ξ_i$, and let $C_{n,d}:=\text{conv}(0,S_1,S_2,\ldots,S_n)$ be the convex hull of the first $n+1$ points it has visited. The polytope $C_{n,d}$ is called $k$-neighborly if for every indices $0\leq i_0 <\cdots < i_k\leq n$ the convex hull of the $k+1$ points $S_{i_0},\ldots, S_{i_k}$ is a $k$-dimensional face of $C_{n,d}$. We study the probability that $C_{n,d}$ is $k$-neighborly in various high-dimensional asymptotic r…
We consider a long-range version of self-avoiding walk in dimension $d > 2(α\wedge 2)$, where $d$ denotes dimension and $α$ the power-law decay exponent of the coupling function. Under appropriate scaling we prove convergence to Brownian motion for $α\ge 2$, and to $α$-stable Lévy motion for $α< 2$. This complements results by Slade (1988), who proves convergence to Brownian motion for nearest-neighbor self-avoiding walk in high dimension.
We outline a proof, by a rigorous renormalisation group method, that the critical two-point function for continuous-time weakly self-avoiding walk on Z^d decays as |x|^{-(d-2)} in the critical dimension d=4, and also for all d>4.
We give a survey and unified treatment of functional integral representations for both simple random walk and some self-avoiding walk models, including models with strict self-avoidance, with weak self-avoidance, and a model of walks and loops. Our representation for the strictly self-avoiding walk is new. The representations have recently been used as the point of departure for rigorous renormalization group analyses of self-avoiding walk models in dimension 4. For the models without loops, the integral representations involve fermions, and we also provide an introduction to fermionic integra…
We describe some ideas of John Hammersley for proving the existence of critical exponents for two-dimensional self-avoiding walks and provide numerical evidence for their correctness.
We consider random walk and self-avoiding walk whose 1-step distribution is given by $D$, and oriented percolation whose bond-occupation probability is proportional to $D$. Suppose that $D(x)$ decays as $|x|^{-d-α}$ with $α>0$. For random walk in any dimension $d$ and for self-avoiding walk and critical/subcritical oriented percolation above the common upper-critical dimension $d_{\mathrm{c}}\equiv2(α\wedge2)$, we prove large-$t$ asymptotics of the gyration radius, which is the average end-to-end distance of random walk/self-avoiding walk of length $t$ or the average spatial size of an oriente…
We introduce an efficient nonreversible Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithm to generate self-avoiding walks with a variable endpoint. In two dimensions, the new algorithm slightly outperforms the two-move nonreversible Berretti-Sokal algorithm introduced by H.~Hu, X.~Chen, and Y.~Deng in \cite{old}, while for three-dimensional walks, it is 3--5 times faster. The new algorithm introduces nonreversible Markov chains that obey global balance and allows for three types of elementary moves on the existing self-avoiding walk: shorten, extend or alter conformation without changing the walk's length.
We study self-avoiding walk on graphs whose automorphism group has a transitive nonunimodular subgroup. We prove that self-avoiding walk is ballistic, that the bubble diagram converges at criticality, and that the critical two-point function decays exponentially in the distance from the origin. This implies that the critical exponent governing the susceptibility takes its mean-field value, and hence that the number of self-avoiding walks of length $n$ is comparable to the $n$th power of the connective constant. We also prove that the same results hold for a large class of repulsive walk models…
A planar self-avoiding walk (SAW) is a nearest neighbor random walk path in the square lattice with no self-intersection. A planar self-avoiding polygon (SAP) is a loop with no self-intersection. In this paper we present conjectures for the scaling limit of the uniform measures on these objects. The conjectures are based on recent results on the stochastic Loewner evolution and non-disconnecting Brownian motions. New heuristic derivations are given for the critical exponents for SAWs and SAPs.
We prove that self-avoiding walk on Z^d is sub-ballistic in any dimension d at least two. That is, writing ||u|| for the Euclidean norm of u \in Z^d, and SAW_n for the uniform measure on self-avoiding walks gamma:{0,...,n} \to Z^d for which gamma_0 = 0, we show that, for each v > 0, there exists c > 0 such that, for each positive integer n, SAW_n (max {|| gamma_k || : k \in {0,...,n}} > v n) < e^{- c n}.
We consider a self-avoiding walk on the dual $\mathbb{Z}^2$ lattice. This walk can traverse the same square twice but cannot cross the same edge more than once. The weight of each square visited by the walk depends on the way the walk passes through it and the weight of the whole walk is calculated as a product of these weights. We consider a family of critical weights parametrized by angle $θ\in[\fracπ{3},\frac{2π}{3}]$. For $θ=\fracπ{3}$, this can be mapped to the self-avoiding walk on the honeycomb lattice. The connective constant in this case was proved to be equal to $\sqrt{2+\sqrt{2}}$ b…
The main result of this paper is a general central limit theorem for distributions defined by certain renewal type equations. We apply this to weakly self-avoiding random walks. We give good error estimates and Gaussian tail estimates which have not been obtained by other methods. We use the lace expansion and at the same time develop a new perspective on this method: We work with a fixed point argument directly in the x-space without using Laplace or Fourier transformation.
We prove two results on the delocalization of the endpoint of a uniform self-avoiding walk on Z^d for d>1. We show that the probability that a walk of length n ends at a point x tends to 0 as n tends to infinity, uniformly in x. Also, for any fixed x in Z^d, this probability decreases faster than n^{-1/4 + epsilon} for any epsilon >0. When |x|= 1, we thus obtain a bound on the probability that self-avoiding walk is a polygon.
We consider self-avoiding walk, percolation and the Ising model with long and finite range. By means of the lace expansion we prove mean-field behavior for these models if $d>2(α\wedge2)$ for self-avoiding walk and the Ising model, and $d>3(α\wedge2)$ for percolation, where $d$ denotes the dimension and $α$ the power-law decay exponent of the coupling function. We provide a simplified analysis of the lace expansion based on the trigonometric approach in Borgs et al. (2007)
