Let G be a free product of a finite family of finite groups, with the set of generators being formed by the union of the finite groups. We consider a transient nearest-neighbour random walk on G. We give a new proof of the fact that the harmonic measure is a special Markovian measure entirely determined by a finite set of polynomial equations. We show that in several simple cases of interest, the polynomial equations can be explicitely solved, to get closed form formulas for the drift. The examples considered are the modular group Z/2Z*Z/3Z, Z/3Z*Z/3Z, Z/kZ*Z/kZ, and the Hecke groups Z/2Z*Z/kZ. We also use these various examples to study Vershik's notion of extremal generators, which is based on the relation between the drift, the entropy, and the volume of the group.
This paper is an appendix to the paper "Random walks on free products of cyclic groups" by J.Mairesse and F.Mathéus. It contains the details of the computations and the proofs of the results concerning the examples treated there.
A cyclic random walk is a random walk whose transition probabilities/rates can be written as a superposition of the empirical measures of a family of finite cycles. This identifies a convex set of models. We discuss the problem of characterization of cyclic random walks in some special cases showing that it is related to several remarkable and classical results. In particular we introduce the notion of balanced measure and show that a translation invariant random walk on $\mathbb Z^d$ is cyclic if and only if its transition probability is balanced. The characterization of the extremal elements…
We identify a relationship between a certain family of random walks on Euclidean lattices and difference matrices over cyclic groups. We then use the techniques of Fourier analysis to estimate the return probabilities of these random walks, which in turn yields the asymptotic number of difference matrices over cyclic groups as the number of columns increases.
We determine all positive harmonic functions for a large class of "semi-isotropic" random walks on the lamplighter group, i.e., the wreath product of the cyclic group of order q with the infinite cyclic group. This is possible via the geometric realization of a Cayley graph of that group as the Diestel-Leader graph DL(q,q). More generally, DL(q,r) is the horocyclic product of two homogeneous trees with respective degrees $q+1$ and $r+1$, and our result applies to all DL-graphs. This is based on a careful study of the minimal harmonic functions for semi-isotropic walks on trees.
We derive Donsker-Vardhan type results for functionals of the occupation times when the underlying random walk on $\mathbb Z^d$ is in the domain of attraction of an operator-stable law on $\mathbb R^d$. Applications to random walks on wreath products (also known as lamplighter groups) are given.
In this article we consider transient random walks on free products of graphs. We prove that the asymptotic range of these random walks exists and is strictly positive. In particular, we show that the range varies real-analytically in terms of probability measures of constant support. Moreover, we prove a central limit theorem associated with the range of the random walk.
In this article, we consider products of random walks on finite groups with moderate growth and discuss their cutoffs in the total variation. Based on several comparison techniques, we are able to identify the total variation cutoff of discrete time lazy random walks with the Hellinger distance cutoff of continuous time random walks. Along with the cutoff criterion for Laplace transforms, we derive a series of equivalent conditions on the existence of cutoffs, including the existence of pre-cutoffs, Peres' product condition and a formula generated by the graph diameters. For illustration, we c…
In a series of papers, G. Harmer and D. Abbott study the behavior of random walks associated with games introduced in 1997 by J. M. R. Parrondo. These games illustrate an apparent paradox that random and deterministic mixtures of losing games may produce winning games. In this paper, classical cyclic random walks on the additive group of integers modulo $m$, a given integer, are used in a straightforward way to derive the strong law limits of a general class of games that contains the Parrondo games. We then consider the question of when random mixtures of fair games related to these walks may…
Suppose we are given the free product V of a finite family of finite or countable sets. We consider a transient random walk on the free product arising naturally from a convex combination of random walks on the free factors. We prove the existence of the asymptotic entropy and present three different, equivalent formulas, which are derived by three different techniques. In particular, we will show that the entropy is the rate of escape with respect to the Greenian metric. Moreover, we link asymptotic entropy with the rate of escape and volume growth resulting in two inequalities.
We consider random walks on the set of all words over a finite alphabet such that in each step only the last two letters of the current word may be modified and only one letter may be adjoined or deleted. We assume that the transition probabilities depend only on the last two letters of the current word. Furthermore, we consider also the special case of random walks on free products by amalgamation of finite groups which arise in a natural way from random walks on the single factors. The aim of this paper is to compute several equivalent formulas for the rate of escape with respect to natural …
We bound the rate of convergence to uniformity for certain random walks on the complete monomial groups G \wr S_n for any group G. These results provide rates of convergence for random walks on a number of groups of interest: the hyperoctahedral group Z_2 \wr S_n, the generalized symmetric group Z_m \wr S_n, and S_m \wr S_n. These results provide benchmarks to which many other random walks, modeling a wide range of phenomena, may be compared using the comparison technique, thereby yielding bounds on the rates of convergence to uniformity for previously intractable random walks.
The rotor walk is a derandomized version of the random walk on a graph. On successive visits to any given vertex, the walker is routed to each of the neighboring vertices in some fixed cyclic order, rather than to a random sequence of neighbors. The concept generalizes naturally to Markov chains on a countable state space. Subject to general conditions, we prove that many natural quantities associated with the rotor walk (including normalized hitting frequencies, hitting times and occupation frequencies) concentrate around their expected values for the random walk. Furthermore, the concentrati…
By developing the entropy theory of random walks on equivalence relations and analyzing the asymptotic geometry of horospheric products we describe the Poisson boundary for random walks on random horospheric products of trees.
Let T be the homogeneous tree with degree and G a finitely generated group whose Cayley graph is T. The associated lamplighter group is the wreath product of the cyclic group of order r with G. For a large class of random walks on this group, we prove almost sure convergence to a natural geometric boundary. If the probability law governing the random walk has finite first moment, then the probability space formed by this geometric boundary together with the limit distribution of the random walk is proved to be maximal, that is, the Poisson boundary. We also prove that the Dirichlet problem at …
We prove existence of the large deviation principle, with a proper convex rate function, for the distribution of the renormalized distance from the origin of a random walk on a free product of finitely generated groups. As a consequence, we derive the same principle for nearest-neighbour random walks on regular trees.
We prove bounded rational ergodicity for some discrepancy skew products whose rotation number has bad rational approximation. This is done by considering the asymptotics of associated affine random walks.
We consider nearest-neighbor random walks on free products of finitely many copies of the integers with amalgamation over nontrivial subgroups. When all the subgroups have index two, we find the Green function of the random walks in terms of complete elliptic integrals. Our technique is to apply Voiculescu's operator--valued R--transform.
In a recent breakthrough, [Bshouty et al., 2005] obtained the first passive-learning algorithm for DNFs under the uniform distribution. They showed that DNFs are learnable in the Random Walk and Noise Sensitivity models. We extend their results in several directions. We first show that thresholds of parities, a natural class encompassing DNFs, cannot be learned efficiently in the Noise Sensitivity model using only statistical queries. In contrast, we show that a cyclic version of the Random Walk model allows to learn efficiently polynomially weighted thresholds of parities. We also extend the …
The rotor walk on a graph is a deterministic analogue of random walk. Each vertex is equipped with a rotor, which routes the walker to the neighbouring vertices in a fixed cyclic order on successive visits. We consider rotor walk on an infinite rooted tree, restarted from the root after each escape to infinity. We prove that the limiting proportion of escapes to infinity equals the escape probability for random walk, provided only finitely many rotors send the walker initially towards the root. For i.i.d. random initial rotor directions on a regular tree, the limiting proportion of escapes is …
A birth-death chain is a discrete-time Markov chain on the integers whose transition probabilities $p_{i,j}$ are non-zero if and only if $|i-j|=1$. We consider birth-death chains whose birth probabilities $p_{i,i+1}$ form a periodic sequence, so that $p_{i,i+1}=p_{i \mod m}$ for some $m$ and $p_0,\ldots,p_{m-1}$. The trajectory $(X_n)_{n=0,1,\ldots}$ of such a chain satisfies a strong law of large numbers and a central limit theorem. We study the effect of reordering the probabilities $p_0,\ldots,p_{m-1}$ on the velocity $v=\lim_{n\to\infty} X_n/n$. The sign of $v$ is not affected by reorderin…
Formulas are derived for counting walks in the Kronecker product of graphs, and the associated spectral distributions are obtained by the Mellin convolution of probability distributions. Two-dimensional restricted lattices admitting the Kronecker product structure are listed, and their spectral distributions are calculated in terms of elliptic integrals.
We find uniform lower bounds on the drift for a large family of random walks on graph products, of the form $ \mathbb{P} (|Z_{n}| \leq κn) \leq e ^{-κn} $ for $ κ> 0 $. This includes the simple random walk for a right-angled Artin group with a sparse defining graph. This is done by extending an argument of Gouëzel, along with the combinatorial notion of a piling introduced by Crisp, Godelle, and Wiest. We do not use any moment conditions, instead considering random walks which alternate between one measure uniformly distributed on vertex groups, and another measure over which we make almost no…
We give a solution to the inverse problem (given a function, find a corresponding group) for large classes of speed, entropy, isoperimetric profile, return probability and $L_p$-compression functions of finitely generated groups of exponential volume growth. For smaller classes, we give solutions among solvable groups. As corollaries, we prove a recent conjecture of Amir on joint evaluation of speed and entropy exponents and we obtain a new proof of the existence of uncountably many pairwise non-quasi-isometric solvable groups, originally due to Cornulier and Tessera. We also obtain a formula …
The connective constant $μ(G)$ of a graph $G$ is the asymptotic growth rate of the number $σ_{n}$ of self-avoiding walks of length $n$ in $G$ from a given vertex. We prove a formula for the connective constant for free products of quasi-transitive graphs and show that $σ_{n}\sim A_{G} μ(G)^{n}$ for some constant $A_{G}$ that depends on $G$. In the case of finite products $μ(G)$ can be calculated explicitly and is shown to be an algebraic number.
