We show that random walk in uniformly elliptic i.i.d. environment in dimension $\geq5$ has at most one non zero limiting velocity. In particular this proves a law of large numbers in the distributionally symmetric case and establishes connections between different conjectures.
In this note, we make explicit the law of the renormalized supercritical branching random walk, giving credit to a conjecture formulated in a previous works of the authors for a continuous analog of the branching random walk. Also, in the case of a branching random walk on a homogeneous tree, we express the law of the corresponding limiting renormalized Gibbs measures, confirming, in this discrete model, conjectures formulated by physicists about the Poisson-Dirichlet nature of the jumps in the limit, and precising the conjecture by giving the spatial distribution of these jumps.
We consider random walks in strong-mixing random Gibbsian environments in $\mathbb{Z}^d, d\ge 2$. Based on regeneration arguments, we will first provide an alternative proof of Rassoul-Agha's conditional law of large numbers (CLLN) for mixing environment Rassoul-Agha (2005). Then, using coupling techniques, we show that there is at most one nonzero limiting velocity in high dimensions ($d\ge 5$).
For a one-dimensional random walk in random scenery (RWRS) on Z, we determine its quenched weak limits by applying Strassen's functional law of the iterated logarithm. As a consequence, conditioned on the random scenery, the one-dimensional RWRS does not converge in law, in contrast with the multi-dimensional case.
We study the limiting behaviors of a generalized elephant random walk on the integer lattice. This random walk is defined by using two sequences of parameters expressing the memory at each step from the whole past and the drift of each step to the right, respectively. This model is also regarded as a dependent Bernoulli process. Our results reveal how the scaling factors are determined by the behaviors of the parameters. In particular, we allow the degeneracy of the parameters. We further present several examples in which the scaling factors are explicitly computed.
Let ζbe the intersection exponent of random walks in Z^3 and αbe a positive real number. We construct a stochastic process from a simple random walk by erasing loops of length at most N^α. We will prove that for α< \frac{1}{1+2ζ}, the limiting distribution is Gaussian. For α> 2 the limiting distribution will be shown to be equal to the limiting distribution of the loop erased walk.
We consider a one-dimensional, transient random walk in a random i.i.d. environment. The asymptotic behaviour of such random walk depends to a large extent on a crucial parameter $κ>0$ that determines the fluctuations of the process. When $0<κ<2$, the averaged distributions of the hitting times of the random walk converge to a $κ$-stable distribution. However, it was shown recently that in this case there does not exist a quenched limiting distribution of the hitting times. That is, it is not true that for almost every fixed environment, the distributions of the hitting times (centered and sca…
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…
How many shuffles are needed to mix up a deck of cards? This question may be answered in the language of a random walk on the symmetric group, $S_{52}$. This generalises neatly to the study of random walks on finite groups, themselves a special class of Markov chains. Ergodic random walks exhibit nice limiting behaviour, and both the quantitative and qualitative aspects of the convergence to this limiting behaviour is examined. A particular qualitative behaviour, the cut-off phenomenon, occurs in many examples. For random walks exhibiting this behaviour, after a period of time, convergence to …
An excited random walk is a non-Markovian extension of the simple random walk, in which the walk's behavior at time $n$ is impacted by the path it has taken up to time $n$. The properties of an excited random walk are more difficult to investigate than those of a simple random walk. For example, the limiting speed of an excited random walk is either zero or unknown depending on its initial conditions. While its limiting speed is unknown in most cases, the qualitative behavior of an excited random walk is largely determined by a parameter $δ$ which can be computed explicitly. Despite this, it i…
Let $V$ be a two sided random walk and let $X$ denote a real valued diffusion process with generator ${1/2}e^{V([x])}\frac{d}{dx}(e^{-V([x])}\frac{d}{dx})$. This process is known to be the continuous equivalent of the one dimensional random walk in random environment with potential $V$. Hu and Shi (1997) described the Lévy classes of $X$ in the case where $V$ behaves approximately like a Brownian motion. In this paper, based on some fine results on the fluctuations of random walks and stable processes, we obtain an accurate image of the almost sure limiting behavior of $X$ when $V$ behaves asy…
We prove a strong law of large numbers and an annealed invariance principle for a random walk in a one-dimensional dynamic random environment evolving as the simple exclusion process with jump parameter $γ$. First, we establish that if the asymptotic velocity of the walker is non-zero in the limiting case "$γ= \infty$", where the environment gets fully refreshed between each step of the walker, then, for $γ$ large enough, the walker still has a non-zero asymptotic velocity in the same direction. Second, we establish that if the walker is transient in the limiting case $γ= 0$, then, for $γ$ sma…
We consider, following the work of S. Kerov, random walks which are continuous-space generalizations of the Hook Walks defined by Greene-Nijenhuis-Wilf, performed under the graph of a continual Young diagram. The limiting point of these walks is a point on the graph of the diagram. We present several explicit formulas giving the probability densities of these limiting points in terms of the shape of the diagram. This partially resolves a conjecture of Kerov concerning an explicit formula for the so-called Markov transform. We also present two inverse formulas, reconstructing the shape of the d…
We present an overview of the representation theoretic techniques used to study the mixing times of random walks on finite groups. We focus on the card shuffle studied by Diaconis and Shahshahani in the 1980s and a recent improvement on their result by Teyssier
Internal diffusion-limited aggregation is a growth model based on random walk in Z^d. We study how the shape of the aggregate depends on the law of the underlying walk, focusing on a family of walks in Z^2 for which the limiting shape is a diamond. Certain of these walks -- those with a directional bias toward the origin -- have at most logarithmic fluctuations around the limiting shape. This contrasts with the simple random walk, where the limiting shape is a disk and the best known bound on the fluctuations, due to Lawler, is a power law. Our walks enjoy a uniform layering property which sim…
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.
We study the behaviour of a sequence of biased random walks X(i), i>=0 on a sequence of random graphs, where the initial graph is Zd and otherwise the graph for the i-th walk is the trace of the (i - 1)-st walk. The sequence of bias vectors is chosen so that each walk is transient. We prove the aforementioned transience and a law of large numbers, and provide criteria for ballisticity and sub-ballisticity. We give examples of sequences of biases for which each X(i), i>=1 is (transient but) not ballistic, and the limiting graph is an infinite simple (self-avoiding) path. We also give examples f…
We consider nonintersecting random walks satisfying the condition that the increments have a finite moment generating function. We prove that in a certain limiting regime where the number of walks and the number of time steps grow to infinity, several limiting distributions of the walks at the mid-time behave as the eigenvalues of random Hermitian matrices as the dimension of the matrices grows to infinity.
We consider a branching random walk on $\mathbb{Z}$ started by $n$ particles at the origin, where each particle disperses according to a mean-zero random walk with bounded support and reproduces with mean number of offspring $1+θ/n$. For $t\geq 0$, we study $M_{nt}$, the rightmost position reached by the branching random walk up to generation $[nt]$. Under certain moment assumptions on the branching law, we prove that $M_{nt}/\sqrt{n}$ converges weakly to the rightmost support point of the local time of the limiting super-Brownian motion. The convergence result establishes a sharp exponential …
We study the limiting occupation density process for a large number of critical and driftless branching random walks. We show that the rescaled occupation densities of $\lfloor sN\rfloor$ branching random walks, viewed as a function-valued, increasing process $\{g_{s}^{N}\}_{s\ge 0}$, converges weakly to a pure jump process in the Skorohod space $\mathbb D([0, +\infty), \mathcal C_{0}(\mathbb R))$, as $N\to\infty$. Moreover, the jumps of the limiting process consist of i.i.d. copies of an Integrated super-Brownian Excursion (ISE) density, rescaled and weighted by the jump sizes in a real-value…
This investigation is motivated by a result we proved recently for the random transposition random walk: the distance from the starting point of the walk has a phase transition from a linear regime to a sublinear regime at time $n/2$. Here, we study three new examples. It is trivial that the distance for random walk on the hypercube is smooth and is given by one simple formula. In the case of random adjacent transpositions, we find that there is no phase transition even though the distance has different scalings in three different regimes. In the case of a random 3-regular graph, there is a ph…
It is a common practice to describe branching random walks in terms of birth, death and walk of particles, which makes it easier to use them in different applications. The main results obtained for the models of symmetric continuous-time heavy-tailed branching random walks on a multidimensional lattice. We will be mainly interested in studying the problems related to the limiting behavior of branching random walks such as the existence of phase transitions under change of various parameters, the properties of the limiting distribution and the survival probability of a particle population. Emph…
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…
In this paper we consider a sequence of n coin tosses, whose outcome depends on the previous n-1 tosses. In particular, their distribution is not i.i.d. We compute the limiting distribution of this sequence using the method of images.
In this paper, we define a new type of decoherent quantum random walks with parameter $0\le p\le 1$, which becomes a unitary quantum random walk (UQRW) when $p=0$ and an open quantum random walk (OPRW) when $p=1$ respectively. We call this process a partially open quantum random walk (POQRW). We study the limiting distribution of a POQRW on $Z^1$ subject to decoherence on coins with $n$ degrees of freedom, which converges to a convex combination of normal distributions if the superoperator $\mathcal{L}_{kk}$ satisfies the eigenvalue condition, that is, 1 is an eigenvalue of $\mathcal{L}_{kk}$ …
We consider a random walk on $\Z$ that branches at the origin only. In the supercritical regime we establish a law of large number for the maximal position $M_n$. Then we determine all possible limiting law for the sequence $M_n -αn$ where $α$ is a deterministic constant.
We consider several variants of a class of random walks whose increment distributions depend on the average value of the process over its most recent $N$ steps. We investigate the speed of the process, and in particular, the limiting speed as the "history window" $N\to\infty$.
For one-dimensional simple random walk in a general i.i.d. scenery and its limiting process we construct a coupling with explicit rate of approximation extending a recent result for Gaussian sceneries due to Khoshnevisan and Lewis. Furthermore we explicity identify the constant in the law of iterated logarithm.
We consider uniform spanning tree (UST) in topological polygons with $2N$ marked points on the boundary with alternating boundary conditions. In [LPW21], the authors derive the scaling limit of the Peano curve in the UST. They are variants of SLE$_8$. In this article, we derive the scaling limit of the loop-erased random walk branch (LERW) in the UST. They are variants of SLE$_2$. The conclusion is a generalization of [HLW20,Theorem 1.6] where the authors derive the scaling limit of the LERW branch of UST when $N=2$. When $N=2$, the limiting law is SLE$_2(-1,-1; -1, -1)$. However, the limiting…
We consider the elephant random walk with general step distribution. We calculate the first four moments of the limiting distribution of the position rescaled by $n^α$ in the superdiffusive regime where $α$ is the memory parameter. This extends the results obtained by Bercu.
This paper states a law of large numbers for a random walk in a random iid environment on ${\mathbb Z}^d$, where the environment follows some Dirichlet distribution. Moreover, we give explicit bounds for the asymptotic velocity of the process and also an asymptotic expansion of this velocity at low disorder.
We consider multidimensional discrete valued random walks with nonzero drift killed when leaving general cones of the euclidian space. We find the asymptotics for the exit time from the cone and study weak convergence of the process conditioned on not leaving the cone. We get quasistationarity of its limiting distribution. Finally we construct a version of the random walk conditioned to never leave the cone.
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.
We study a biased random walk on the interlacement set of $\mathbb{Z}^d$ for $d\geq 3$. Although the walk is always transient, we can show, in the case $d=3$, that for any value of the bias the walk has a zero limiting speed and actually moves slower than any power.
We consider random walk among random conductances where the conductance environment is shift invariant and ergodic. We study which moment conditions of the conductances guarantee speed zero of the random walk. We show that if there exists α>1 such that E[log^α(ω_e)]<\infty, then the random walk has speed zero. On the other hand, for each α>1 we provide examples of random walks with non-zero speed and random walks for which the limiting speed does not exist that have E[log^α(ω_e)]<\infty.
We consider the model of the one-dimensional cookie random walk when the initial cookie distribution is spatially uniform and the number of cookies per site is finite. We give a criterion to decide whether the limiting speed of the walk is non-zero. In particular, we show that a positive speed may be obtained for just 3 cookies per site. We also prove a result on the continuity of the speed with respect to the initial cookie distribution.
Consider a family of random ordered graph trees $(T_n)_{n\geq 1}$, where $T_n$ has $n$ vertices. It has previously been established that if the associated search-depth processes converge to the normalised Brownian excursion when rescaled appropriately as $n\rightarrow\infty$, then the simple random walks on the graph trees have the Brownian motion on the Brownian continuum random tree as their scaling limit. Here, this result is extended to demonstrate the existence of a diffusion scaling limit whenever the volume measure on the limiting real tree is nonatomic, supported on the leaves of the l…
A transient stochastic process is considered strongly transient if conditioned on returning to the starting location, the expected time it takes to return the the starting location is finite. We characterize strong transience for a one-dimensional random walk in a random environment. We show that under the quenched measure transience is equivalent to strong transience, while under the averaged measure strong transience is equivalent to ballisticity (transience with non-zero limiting speed).
Continuous time random walks have random waiting times between particle jumps. We define the correlated continuous time random walks (CTRWs) that converge to fractional Pearson diffusions (fPDs). The jumps in these CTRWs are obtained from Markov chains through the Bernoulli urn-scheme model and Wright-Fisher model. The jumps are correlated so that the limiting processes are not Lévy but diffusion processes with non-independent increments. The waiting times are selected from the domain of attraction of a stable law
A scaling limit for the simple random walk on the largest connected component of the Erdos-Renyi random graph in the critical window is deduced. The limiting diffusion is constructed using resistance form techniques, and is shown to satisfy the same quenched short-time heat kernel asymptotics as the Brownian motion on the continuum random tree.
Examples of interacting particle systems on $\mathbb{Z}$ as Pfaffian point processes: coalescing branching random walks and annihilating random walks with immigration
Let $W$ be a finite Weyl group and $\widetilde W$ the corresponding affine Weyl group. A random element of $\widetilde W$ can be obtained as a reduced random walk on the alcoves of $\widetilde W$. By a theorem of Lam (Ann. Prob. 2015), such a walk almost surely approaches one of $|W|$ many directions. We compute these directions when $W$ is $B_n$, $C_n$ and $D_n$ and the random walk is weighted by Kac and dual Kac labels. This settles Lam's questions for types $B$ and $C$ in the affirmative and for type $D$ in the negative. The main tool is a combinatorial two row model for a totally asymmetri…
Random walk on changing graphs is considered. For sequences of finite graphs increasing monotonically towards a limiting infinite graph, we establish transition probability upper bounds. It yields sufficient transience criteria for simple random walk on slowly growing graphs, upon knowing the volume and Cheeger constant of each graph. For much more specialized cases, we establish matching lower bounds, and deduce sufficient (weak) recurrence criteria. We also address recurrence directly in relation to a universality conjecture of [DHS]. We answer a related question of [SZ, Problem 1.8] about "…
We consider one-dimensional excited random walks (ERWs) with i.i.d. markovian cookie stacks in the non-boundary recurrent regime. We prove that under diffusive scaling such an ERW converges in the standard Skorokhod topology to a multiple of Brownian motion perturbed at its extrema (BMPE). All parameters of the limiting process are given explicitly in terms of those of the cookie markov chain at a single site. While our results extend the results of Dolgopyat and Kosygina (2012, ERWs with boundedly many cookies per site) and Kosygina and Peterson (2016, ERWs with periodic cookie stacks), the a…
We study the problem of forecasting volatility for the multifractal random walk model. In order to avoid the ill posed problem of estimating the correlation length T of the model, we introduce a limiting object defined in a quotient space; formally, this object is an infinite range logvolatility. For this object and the non limiting object, we obtain precise prediction formulas and we apply them to the problem of forecasting volatility and pricing options with the MRW model in the absence of a reliable estimate of the average volatility and T.
We establish scaling limits for the random walk whose state space is the range of a simple random walk on the four-dimensional integer lattice. These concern the asymptotic behaviour of the graph distance from the origin and the spatial location of the random walk in question. The limiting processes are the analogues of those for higher-dimensional versions of the model, but additional logarithmic terms in the scaling factors are needed to see these. The proof applies recently developed machinery relating the scaling of resistance metric spaces and stochastic processes, with key inputs being n…
We prove CLTs for biased randomly trapped random walks in one dimension. In particular, we will establish an annealed invariance principal by considering a sequence of regeneration times under the assumption that the trapping times have finite second moment. In a quenched environment, an environment dependent centring is determined which is necessary to achieve a central limit theorem. As our main motivation, we apply these results to biased walks on subcritical Galton-Watson trees conditioned to survive and prove a tight bound on the bias required to obtain such limiting behaviour.
In this work, we consider a modification of time \emph{inhomogeneous} branching random walk, where the driving increment distribution changes over time macroscopically. Following Bandyopadhyay and Ghosh (2021), we give certain independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) displacements to all the particles at the last generation. We call this process \emph{last progeny modified time inhomogeneous branching random walk (LPMTI-BRW)}. Under very minimal assumptions on the underlying point processes of the displacements, we show that the maximum displacement converges to a limit after only an a…
We consider biased random walk among iid, uniformly elliptic conductances on $\mathbb{Z}^d$, and investigate the monotonicity of the velocity as a function of the bias. It is not hard to see that if the bias is large enough, the velocity is increasing as a function of the bias. Our main result is that if the disorder is small, i.e. all the conductances are close enough to each other, the velocity is always strictly increasing as a function of the bias, see Theorem 1. A crucial ingredient of the proof is a formula for the derivative of the velocity, which can be written as a covariance, see The…