We consider a discrete time random walk in a space-time i.i.d. random environment. We use a martingale approach to show that the walk is diffusive in almost every fixed environment. We improve on existing results by proving an invariance principle and considering environments with an annealed $L^2$ drift. We also state an a.s. invariance principle for random walks in general random environments whose hypothesis requires a subdiffusive bound on the variance of the quenched mean, under an ergodic invariant measure for the environment chain.
We consider Sinai's random walk in random environment. We prove that infinitely often (i.o.) the size of the concentration neighborhood of this random walk is almost surely bounded. As an application we get that i.o. the maximal distance between two favorite sites is almost surely bounded.
We consider a random walk on $\R^d$ in a polynomially mixing random environment that is refreshed at each time step. We use a martingale approach to give a necessary and sufficient condition for the almost-sure functional central limit theorem to hold.
We prove a quenched almost sure invariance principle for certain classes of random distance expanding dynamical systems which do not necessarily exhibit uniform decay of correlations.
It is shown that the path of a simple random walk on any graph, consisting of all vertices visited and edges crossed by the walk, is almost surely a recurrent subgraph.
We prove a strong invariance principle for the Kantorovich distance between the empiricaldistribution and the marginal distribution of stationary $α$-mixing sequences.
We consider a non-nestling random walk in a product random environment. We assume an exponential moment for the step of the walk, uniformly in the environment. We prove an invariance principle (functional central limit theorem) under almost every environment for the centered and diffusively scaled walk. The main point behind the invariance principle is that the quenched mean of the walk behaves subdiffusively.
Understanding the statistical properties of the aperiodic planar Lorentz gas stands as a grand challenge in the theory of dynamical systems. Here we study a greatly simplified but related model, proposed by Arvind Ayyer and popularized by Joel Lebowitz, in which a scatterer configuration on the torus is randomly updated between collisions. Taking advantage of recent progress in the theory of time-dependent billiards on the one hand and in probability theory on the other, we prove a vector-valued almost sure invariance principle for the model. Notably, the configuration sequence can be weakly d…
We study linearly edge-reinforced random walks on $\mathbb{Z}_+$, where each edge $\{x,x+1\}$ has the initial weight $x^α \vee 1$, and each time an edge is traversed, its weight is increased by $Δ$. It is known that the walk is recurrent if and only if $α\leq 1$. The aim of this paper is to study the almost sure behavior of the walk in the recurrent regime. For $α<1$ and $Δ>0$, we obtain a limit theorem which is a counterpart of the law of the iterated logarithm for simple random walks. This reveals that the speed of the walk with $Δ>0$ is much slower than $Δ=0$. In the critical case $α=1$, ou…
We consider reversible random walks in random environment obtained from symmetric long--range jump rates on a random point process. We prove almost sure transience and recurrence results under suitable assumptions on the point process and the jump rate function. For recurrent models we obtain almost sure estimates on effective resistances in finite boxes. For transient models we construct explicit fluxes with finite energy on the associated electrical network.
We prove an invariance principle (functional central limit theorem) for a vector-valued additive functional of a Markov chain for almost every starting point with respect to an ergodic equilibrium distribution. The hypothesis is a moment bound on the resolvent.
We are interested in the biased random walk on a supercritical Galton--Watson tree in the sense of Lyons, Pemantle and Peres, and study a phenomenon of slow movement. In order to observe such a slow movement, the bias needs to be random; the resulting random walk is then a tree-valued random walk in random environment. We investigate the recurrent case, and prove, under suitable general integrability assumptions, that upon the system's non-extinction, the maximal displacement of the walk in the first n steps, divided by (log n)^3, converges almost surely to a known positive constant.
Consider a real-valued branching random walk in the boundary case. Using the techniques developed by Aïdékon and Shi [5], we give two integral tests which describe respectively the lower limits for the minimal position and the upper limits for the associated additive martingale.
We prove the almost sure invariance principle for stationary R^d--valued processes (with dimension-independent very precise error terms), solely under a strong assumption on the characteristic functions of these processes. This assumption is easy to check for large classes of dynamical systems or Markov chains, using strong or weak spectral perturbation arguments.
We consider a multidimensional random walk in a product random environment with bounded steps, transience in some spatial direction, and high enough moments on the regeneration time. We prove an invariance principle, or functional central limit theorem, under almost every environment for the diffusively scaled centered walk. The main point behind the invariance principle is that the quenched mean of the walk behaves subdiffusively.
We deal with random processes obtained from a homogeneous random process with independent increments by replacement of the time scale and by multiplication by a norming constant. We prove the convergence in distribution of these processes to Wiener process in Skorokhod space endowed by the topology of uniform convergence. An integral type almost sure version of this theorem is obtained.
We show that on a Cayley graph of a nonamenable group, almost surely the infinite clusters of Bernoulli percolation are transient for simple random walk, that simple random walk on these clusters has positive speed, and that these clusters admit bounded harmonic functions. A principal new finding on which these results are based is that such clusters admit invariant random subgraphs with positive isoperimetric constant. We also show that percolation clusters in any amenable Cayley graph almost surely admit no nonconstant harmonic Dirichlet functions. Conversely, on a Cayley graph admitting non…
Inspired by \citet{Berkes14} and \citet{Wu07}, we prove an almost sure invariance principle for stationary $β-$mixing stochastic processes defined on Hilbert space. Our result can be applied to Markov chain satisfying Meyn-Tweedie type Lyapunov condition and thus generalises the contraction condition in \citet[Example 2.2]{Berkes14}. We prove our main theorem by the big and small blocks technique and an embedding result in \citet{gotze2011estimates}. Our result is further applied to the ergodic Markov chain and functional autoregressive processes.
We prove an almost sure invariance principle (approximation by d-dimensional Brownian motion) for vector-valued Holder observables of large classes of nonuniformly hyperbolic dynamical systems. These systems include Axiom~A diffeomorphisms and flows as well as systems modelled by Young towers with moderate tail decay rates. In particular, the position variable of the planar periodic Lorentz gas with finite horizon approximates a 2-dimensional Brownian motion.
In this note we (in particular) prove an almost sure invariance principle (ASIP) for non-stationary and uniformly bounded sequences of random variables which are exponentially fast $ϕ$-mixing. The obtained rate is of order $o(V_n^{\frac14+\del})$ for an arbitrary $\del>0$, where $V_n$ is the variance of the underlying partial sums $S_n$. For certain classes of inhomogeneous Markov chains we also prove a vector-valued ASIP with similar rates.
For a large class of quickly mixing dynamical systems, we prove that the error in the almost sure approximation with a Brownian motion is of order O((log n)^a) with a $\ge$ 2. Specifically, we consider nonuniformly expanding maps with exponential and stretched exponential decay of correlations, with one-dimensional H{ö}lder continuous observables.
In this paper we estimate the rest of the approximation of a stationary process by a martingale in terms of the projections of partial sums. Then, based on this estimate, we obtain almost sure approximation of partial sums by a martingale with stationary differences. The results are exploited to further investigate the central limit theorem and its invariance principle started at a point, as well as the law of the iterated logarithm via almost sure approximation with a Brownian motion, improving the results available in the literature. The conditions are well suited for a variety of examples; …
Simple random walks on a partially directed version of $\mathbb{Z}^2$ are considered. More precisely, vertical edges between neighbouring vertices of $\mathbb{Z}^2$ can be traversed in both directions (they are undirected) while horizontal edges are one-way. The horizontal orientation is prescribed by a random perturbation of a periodic function, the perturbation probability decays according to a power law in the absolute value of the ordinate. We study the type of the simple random walk, i.e.\ its being recurrent or transient, and show that there exists a critical value of the decay power, ab…
We consider the branching random walks in $d$-dimensional integer lattice with time--space i.i.d. offspring distributions. Then the normalization of the total population is a nonnegative martingale and it almost surely converges to a certain random variable. When $d\geq3$ and the fluctuation of environment satisfies a certain uniform square integrability then it is nondegenerate and we prove a central limit theorem for the density of the population in terms of almost sure convergence.
We prove that random walks in random environments, that are exponentially mixing in space and time, are almost surely diffusive, in the sense that their scaling limit is given by the Wiener measure.
We prove almost sure invariance principle, a strong form of approximation by Brownian motion, for non-autonomous holomorphic dynamical systems on complex projective space $\Bbb{P}^k$ for Hölder continuous and DSH observables.
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.
We extend the spectral approach of S. Gouëzel for the vector-valued almost sure invariance principle (ASIP) to certain classes of non-stationary sequences with a weaker control over the behavior of the covariance matrices, assuming only linear growth. Then we apply this extension to obtain a quenched vector-valued ASIP for random perturbations of a fixed Anosov diffeomorphism as well as random perturbations of a billiard map associated to the periodic Lorentz gas. We also consider certain classes of random piecewise expanding maps.
We consider branching random walks in $d$-dimensional integer lattice with time-space i.i.d. offspring distributions. This model is known to exhibit a phase transition: If $d \ge 3$ and the environment is "not too random", then, the total population grows as fast as its expectation with strictly positive probability. If,on the other hand, $d \le 2$, or the environment is ``random enough", then the total population grows strictly slower than its expectation almost surely. We show the equivalence between the slow population growth and a natural localization property in terms of "replica overlap"…
We provide sufficient conditions which ensure that the intrinsic martingale in the supercritical branching random walk converges exponentially fast to its limit. The case of Galton-Watson processes is particularly included so that our results can be seen as a generalization of a result given in the classical treatise by Asmussen and Hering. As an auxiliary tool, we prove ultimate versions of two results concerning the exponential renewal measures which may be interesting on its own and which correct, generalize and simplify some earlier works.
Techniques of `dynamic renormalization', developed earlier for undirected percolation and the contact model, are adapted to the setting of directed percolation, thereby obtaining solutions of several problems for directed percolation on $Z^d$ where $d \ge 2$. The first new result is a type of uniqueness theorem: for every pair $x$ and $y$ of vertices which lie in infinite open paths, there exists almost surely a third vertex $z$ which is joined to infinity and which is attainable from $x$ and $y$ along directed open paths. Secondly, it is proved that a random walk on an infinite directed clust…
Simulations of the self-avoiding walk (SAW) are performed in a half-plane and a cut-plane (the complex plane with the positive real axis removed) using the pivot algorithm. We test the conjecture of Lawler, Schramm and Werner that the scaling limit of the two-dimensional SAW is given by Schramm's Stochastic Loewner Evolution (SLE). The agreement is found to be excellent. The simulations also test the conformal invariance of the SAW since conformal invariance would imply that if we map the walks in the cut-plane into the half plane using the conformal map z -> sqrt(z), then the resulting walks …
For a symmetric random walk in $Z^2$ with $2+δ$ moments, we represent $|\mathcal{R}(n)|$, the cardinality of the range, in terms of an expansion involving the renormalized intersection local times of a Brownian motion. We show that for each $k\geq 1$ \[ (\log n)^k [ \frac{1}{n} |\mathcal{R}(n)| +\sum_{j=1}^k (-1)^j (\textstyle{\frac1{2π}}\log n +c_X)^{-j} γ_{j,n}]\to 0, \qquad a.s. \] where $W_t$ is a Brownian motion, $W^{(n)}_t=W_{nt}/\sqrt n$, $γ_{j,n}$ is the renormalized intersection local time at time 1 for $W^{(n)}$, and $c_X$ is a constant depending on the distribution of the random wal…
First, we prove a \emph{local almost sure central limit theorem} for lattice random walks in the plane. The corresponding version for random walks in the line was considered by the author in \cite{5}. This gives us a quantitative version of Pólya's Recurrence Theorem \cite{6}. Second, we prove a \emph{local almost sure central limit theorem} for (not necessarly lattice) random walks in the line or in the plane, which will also give us quantitative recurrence results. Finally, we prove an \emph{almost sure central limit theorem} for multidimensional (not necessarly lattice) random walks. This i…
We consider the simple random walk on the (unique) infinite cluster of super-critical bond percolation in $\Z^d$ with $d\ge2$. We prove that, for almost every percolation configuration, the path distribution of the walk converges weakly to that of non-degenerate, isotropic Brownian motion. Our analysis is based on the consideration of a harmonic deformation of the infinite cluster on which the random walk becomes a square-integrable martingale. The size of the deformation, expressed by the so called corrector, is estimated by means of ergodicity arguments.
Let β_k(n) be the number of self-intersections of order k, appropriately renormalized, for a mean zero random walk X_n in Z^2 with 2+δmoments. On a suitable probability space we can construct X_n and a planar Brownian motion W_t such that for each k\geq 2, |β_k(n)-γ_k(n)|=O(n^{-a}), a.s. for some a>0 where γ_k(n) is the renormalized self-intersection local time of order k at time 1 for the Brownian motion W_{nt}/\sqrt n.
The greedy walk is a walk on a point process that always moves from its current position to the nearest not yet visited point. We consider here various point processes on two lines. We look first at the greedy walk on two independent one-dimensional Poisson processes placed on two intersecting lines and prove that the greedy walk almost surely does not visit all points. When a point process is defined on two parallel lines, the result depends on the definition of the process: If each line has a copy of the same realisation of a homogeneous Poisson point process, then the walk almost surely doe…
We obtain a quenched vector-valued almost sure invariance principle (ASIP) for random expanding on average cocycles. This is achieved by combining the adapted version of Gouëzel's approach for establishing ASIP and the recent construction of the so-called adapted norms, which in some sense eliminate the non-uniformity of the decay of correlations. For real-valued observables, we also show that the martingale approximation technique is applicable in our setup, and that it yields the ASIP with better error rates. Finally, we present an example showing the necessity of a scaling condition, answer…
We prove the almost sure invariance principle with rate $o(n^{\varepsilon})$ for every $\varepsilon > 0$ for Hölder continuous observables on nonuniformly expanding and nonuniformly hyperbolic transformations with exponential tails. Examples include Gibbs-Markov maps with big images, Axiom A diffeomorphisms, dispersing billiards and a class of logistic and Hénon maps. The best previously proved rate is $O(n^{1/4} (\log n)^{1/2} (\log \log n)^{1/4})$. As a part of our method, we show that nonuniformly expanding transformations are factors of Markov shifts with simple structure and natural metri…
We consider a randomized urn model with objects of finitely many colors. The replacement matrices are random, and are conditionally independent of the color chosen given the past. Further, the conditional expectations of the replacement matrices are close to an almost surely irreducible matrix. We obtain almost sure and $L^1$ convergence of the configuration vector, the proportion vector and the count vector. We show that first moment is sufficient for i.i.d.\ replacement matrices independent of past color choices. This significantly improves the similar results for urn models obtained in Athr…
We consider two classes of piecewise expanding maps $T$ of $[0,1]$: a class of uniformly expanding maps for which the Perron-Frobenius operator has a spectral gap in the space of bounded variation functions, and a class of expanding maps with a neutral fixed point at zero. In both cases, we give a large class of unbounded functions $f$ for which the partial sums of $f\circ T^i$ satisfy an almost sure invariance principle. This class contains piecewise monotonic functions (with a finite number of branches) such that: - For uniformly expanding maps, they are square integrable with respect to the…
Let $β$ be the growth exponent of the loop-erased random walk (LERW) in three dimensions. We prove that the scaling limit of 3D LERW is $h$-Hölder continuous almost surely for all $h < 1/β$, while not $1/β$-Hölder continuous almost surely.
We study a model of competition between two types evolving as branching random walks on $\mathbb{Z}^d$. The two types are represented by red and blue balls respectively, with the rule that balls of different colour annihilate upon contact. We consider initial configurations in which the sites of $\mathbb{Z}^d$ contain one ball each, which are independently coloured red with probability $p$ and blue otherwise. We address the question of \emph{fixation}, referring to the sites eventually settling for a given colour, or not. Under a mild moment condition on the branching rule, we prove that the p…
Simple random walks on various types of partially horizontally oriented regular lattices are considered. The horizontal orientations of the lattices can be of various types (deterministic or random) and depending on the nature of the orientation the asymptotic behaviour of the random walk is shown to be recurrent or transient. In particular, for randomly horizontally oriented lattices the random walk is almost surely transient.
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 $\…
We prove a vector-valued almost sure invariance principle for some classes of time dependent non-uniformly distance expanding dynamical systems. The models we have in mind are certain sequential versions of the smooth non-uniformly distance expanding maps considered in \cite{castro} and \cite{Vara}, as well as certain types of sequences of covering maps. Our results rely on the theory of complex projective metrics which was developed in \cite{Rug}, together with the spectral methods of Gouëzel \cite{GO}. A big advantage in applying the theory of complex cones here is that it also yields additi…
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 aim of this paper is to investigate the asymptotic behavior of the so-called elephant random walk with stops (ERWS). In contrast with the standard elephant random walk, the elephant is allowed to be lazy by staying on his own position. We prove that the number of ones of the ERWS, properly normalized, converges almost surely to a Mittag-Leffler distribution. It allows us to carry out a sharp analysis on the asymptotic behavior of the ERWS. In the diffusive and critical regimes, we establish the almost sure convergence of the ERWS. We also show that it is necessary to self-normalized the po…
Let $T \colon M \to M$ be a nonuniformly expanding dynamical system, such as logistic or intermittent map. Let $v \colon M \to \mathbb{R}^d$ be an observable and $v_n = \sum_{k=0}^{n-1} v \circ T^k$ denote the Birkhoff sums. Given a probability measure $μ$ on $M$, we consider $v_n$ as a discrete time random process on the probability space $(M, μ)$. In smooth ergodic theory there are various natural choices of $μ$, such as the Lebesgue measure, or the absolutely continuous $T$-invariant measure. They give rise to different random processes. We investigate relation between such processes. We sh…
We consider a random walk on a homogeneous Poisson point process with energy marks. The jump rates decay exponentially in the A-power of the jump length and depend on the energy marks via a Boltzmann--like factor. The case A=1 corresponds to the phonon-induced Mott variable range hopping in disordered solids in the regime of strong Anderson localization. We prove that for almost every realization of the marked process, the diffusively rescaled random walk, with arbitrary start point, converges to a Brownian motion whose diffusion matrix is positive definite, and independent of the environment.…
We study variable-speed random walks on $\mathbb Z$ driven by a family of nearest-neighbor time-dependent random conductances $\{a_t(x,x+1)\colon x\in\mathbb Z, t\ge0\}$ whose law is assumed invariant and ergodic under space-time shifts. We prove a quenched invariance principle for the random walk under the minimal moment conditions on the environment; namely, assuming only that the conductances possess the first positive and negative moments. A novel ingredient is the representation of the parabolic coordinates and the corrector via a dual random walk which is considerably easier to analyze.
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.
We consider $d$ independent walkers in the same random environment in $\mathbb{Z}$. Our assumption on the law of the environment is such that a single walker is transient to the right but subballistic. We show that - no matter what $d$ is - the $d$ walkers meet infinitely often, i.e. there are almost surely infinitely many times for which all the random walkers are at the same location.
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.
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. The ensembles of SAW's used to define these hitting densities involve walks of arbitrary lengths, and so these ensembles cannot be directly studied by the pivot Monte Carlo algorithm for the SAW. We show that these mixed length ensembles should have the same scaling limit as certain weighted ensembles that only involve walks with a single length, thus providing a fast method for simulating these ensembles. Preliminary simulations wh…
We prove that Vertex Reinforced Random Walk on $\mathbb{Z}$ with weight of order $k^α$, with $α\in [0,1/2)$, is either almost surely recurrent or almost surely transient. This improves a previous result of Volkov who showed that the set of sites which are visited infinitely often was a.s. either empty or infinite.
We prove invariance principles for a mulditimensional random walk conditioned to stay in a cone. Our first result concerns convergence towards the Brownian meander in the cone. Furthermore, we prove functional convergence of $h$-transformed random walk to the corresponding $h$-transform of the Brownian motion. Finally, we prove an invariance principle for bridges of a random walk in a cone.
