We prove a quenched central limit theorem for random walks with bounded increments in a randomly evolving environment on $\mathbb{Z}^d$. We assume that the transition probabilities of the walk depend not too strongly on the environment and that the evolution of the environment is Markovian with strong spatial and temporal mixing properties.
We prove an averaged CLT for a random walk in a dynamical environment where the states of the environment at different sites are independent Markov chains.
We make a connection between the continuous time and lazy discrete time Markov chains through the comparison of cutoffs and mixing time in total variation distance. For illustration, we consider finite birth and death chains and provide a criterion on cutoffs using eigenvalues of the transition matrix.
In operator algebra, the linearization trick is a technique that reduces the study of a non-commutative polynomial evaluated at elements of an algebra A to the study of a polynomial of degree one, evaluated on the enlarged algebra A x M r (C), for some integer r. We introduce a new instance of the linearization trick which is tailored to study a finitely supported random walk on a group G by studying instead a nearest-neighbor colored random walk on G x {1,. .. , r}, which is much simpler to analyze. As an application we extend well-known results for nearest-neighbor walks on free groups and f…
We propose an approach to construct Bernoulli trials $\{X_i, i\ge 1\}$ combining dependence and independence periods, and call it Bernoulli sequence with random dependence (BSRD). The structure of dependence, on the past $S_i = X_1 + \ldots + X_i$, {defines} a class of non-Markovian random walks of recent interest in the literature. In this paper, the dependence is activated by an auxiliary collection of Bernoulli trials $\{Y_i, i\ge 1\}$, called {\it memory switch sequence}. We introduce the concept of {\it memory lapses property}, which {is} characterized by intervals of consecutive independ…
By appealing to renewal theory we determine the equations that the mean exit time of a continuous-time random walk with drift satisfies both when the present coincides with a jump instant or when it does not. Particular attention is paid to the corrections ensuing from the non-Markovian nature of the process. We show that when drift and jumps have the same sign the relevant integral equations can be solved in closed form. The case when holding times have the classical Erlang distribution is considered in detail.
We consider a model, introduced by Boldrighini, Minlos and Pellegrinotti, of random walks in dynamical random environments on the integer lattice Z^d with d>=1. In this model, the environment changes over time in a Markovian manner, independently across sites, while the walker uses the environment at its current location in order to make the next transition. In contrast with the cluster expansions approach of Boldrighini, Minlos and Pellegrinotti, we follow a probabilistic argument based on regeneration times. We prove an annealed SLLN and invariance principle for any dimension, and provide a …
We analyze the dynamics of a population of independent random walkers on a graph and develop a simple model of epidemic spreading. We assume that each walker visits independently the nodes of a finite ergodic graph in a discrete-time markovian walk governed by his specific transition matrix. With this assumption, we first derive an upper bound for the reproduction numbers. Then we assume that a walker is in one of the states: susceptible, infectious, or recovered. An infectious walker remains infectious during a certain characteristic time. If an infectious walker meets a susceptible one on th…
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…
One dimensional excited random walk has been extensively studied for bounded, i.i.d. cookie environments. In this case, many important properties of the walk including transience or recurrence, positivity or non-positivity of the speed, and the limiting distribution of the position of the walker are all characterized by a single parameter $δ$, the total expected drift per site. In the more general case of stationary ergodic environments, things are not so well understood. If all cookies are positive then the same threshold for transience vs. recurrence holds, even if the cookie stacks are unbo…
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.
The Tree Builder Random Walk is a special random walk that evolves on trees whose size increases with time, randomly and depending upon the walker. After every s steps of the walker, a random number of vertices are added to the tree and attached to the current position of the walker. These processes share similarities with other important classes of markovian and non-markovian random walks presenting a large variety of behaviors according to parameters specifications. We show that for a large and most significant class of tree builder random walks, the process is either null recurrent or trans…
We introduce a discrete-time random walk model on a one-dimensional lattice with a nonconstant sojourn time and prove that the discrete density converges to a solution of a continuum diffusion equation. Our random walk model is not Markovian due to the heterogeneity in the sojourn time, in contrast to a random walk model with a nonconstant walk length. We derive a Markovian process by choosing appropriate subindexes of the time-space grid points, and then show the convergence of its discrete density through the parabolic-scale limit. We also find the Green's function of the continuum diffusion…
We consider a nearest-neighbor random walk on $\mathbb{Z}$ whose probability $ω_x(j)$ to jump to the right from site $x$ depends not only on $x$ but also on the number of prior visits $j$ to $x$. The collection $(ω_x(j))_{x\in\mathbb{Z},n\ge 0}$ is sometimes called the "cookie environment" due to the following informal interpretation. Upon each visit to a site the walker eats a cookie from the cookie stack at that site and chooses the transition probabilities according to the "strength" of the cookie eaten. We assume that the cookie stacks are i.i.d. and that the cookie "strengths" within the …
In this paper we study the distribution of the level at time $θ$ of Markovian fluid queues and Markovian continuous time random walks, the maximum (and minimum) level over $[0,θ]$, and their joint distributions. We approximate $θ$ by a random variable $T$ with Erlang distribution and we use an alternative way, with respect to the usual Laplace transform approach, to compute the distributions. We present probabilistic interpretation of the equations and provide a numerical illustration.
Let $(Ω,\mathcal{F}, \mathbb{P})$ be a probability space and $E$ be a finite set. Assume that $X=(X_n)$ is an irreducible and aperiodic Markov chain, defined on $(Ω,\mathcal{F}, \mathbb{P})$, with values in $E$ and with transition probability $P=\Big(p_{i,j}\Big)_{i,j}$. Let $(F(i,j,\d x))_{i,j\in E}$ be a family of probability measures on $\mathbb{R}$. Consider a semi-markovian chain $(Y_n,X_n)$ on $\mathbb{R}\times E$ with transition probability $\widetilde{P}$, defined by $\widetilde{P}\Big((u,i),A\times\{j\}\Big)=\mathbb{P}(Y_{n+1}\in A,X_{n+1}=j|Y_n= u,X_n=i)=p_{i,j}F(i,j,A)$, for any $(u…
In a recent work we introduced a semi-Markovian discrete-time generalization of the telegraph process. We referred this random walk to as squirrel random walk (SRW). The SRW is a discrete-time random walk on the one-dimensional infinite lattice where the step direction is reversed at arrival times of a discrete-time renewal process and remains unchanged at uneventful time instants. We first recall general notions of the SRW. The main subject of the paper is the study of the SRW where the step direction switches at the arrival times of a generalization of the Sibuya discrete-time renewal proces…
We consider the motion of a particle on a Galton Watson tree, when the probabilities of jumping from a vertex to any one of its neighbours is determined by a random process. Given the tree, positive weights are assigned to the edges in such a way that, viewed along any line of descent, they evolve as a random process. In order to introduce our method for proving transience or recurrence, we first suppose that the weights are i.i.d., reproving a result of Lyons and Pemantle. We then extend the argument to allow a Markovian environment, and finally to a random walk on a Markovian environment tha…
A classical random walk $(S_t, t\in\mathbb{N})$ is defined by $S_t:=\displaystyle\sum_{n=0}^t X_n$, where $(X_n)$ are i.i.d. When the increments $(X_n)_{n\in\mathbb{N}}$ are a one-order Markov chain, a short memory is introduced in the dynamics of $(S_t)$. This so-called "persistent" random walk is nolonger Markovian and, under suitable conditions, the rescaled process converges towards the integrated telegraph noise (ITN) as the time-scale and space-scale parameters tend to zero (see Herrmann and Vallois, 2010; Tapiero-Vallois, Tapiero-Vallois2}). The ITN process is effectively non-Markovian …
In this work, we investigate a novel setting of Markovian loop measures and introduce a new class of loop measures called Bosonic loop measures. Namely, we consider loop soups with varying intensity $ μ\le 0 $ (chemical potential in physics terms), and secondly, we study Markovian loop measures on graphs with an additional "time" dimension leading to so-called space-time random walks and their loop measures and Poisson point loop processes. Interesting phenomena appear when the additional coordinate of the space-time process is on a discrete torus with non-symmetric jump rates. The projection …
We extend the notion of the associated random walk and the Wald martingale in random walks where the increments are independent and identically distributed to the more general case of stationary ergodic increments. Examples are given where the increments are Markovian or Gaussian, and an application in queueing is considered.
Random walks conditioned to stay positive are a prominent topic in fluctuation theory. One way to construct them is as a random walk conditioned to stay positive up to time $n$, and let $n$ tend to infinity. A second method is conditioning instead to stay positive up to an independent geometric time, and send its parameter to zero. The multidimensional case (condition the components of a $d$-dimensional random walk to be ordered) was solved in [EK08] using the first approach, but some moment conditions need to be imposed. Our approach is based on the second method, which has the advantage to r…
Limit theorems for strongly and intermediately supercritical branching processes in Markovian environment with linear fractional offspring distributions
We study the range of a planar random walk on a randomly oriented lattice, already known to be transient. We prove that the expectation of the range grows linearly, in both the quenched (for a.e. orientation) and annealed ("averaged") cases. We also express the rate of growth in terms of the quenched Green function and eventually prove a weak law of large numbers in the (non-Markovian) annealed case.
We consider a weighted random walk on the backbone of an oriented percolation cluster. We determine necessary conditions on the weights for Brownian scaling limits under the annealed and the quenched law. This model is a random walk in dynamic random environment (RWDRE), where the environment is mixing, non-Markovian and not elliptic. We provide a generalization of results obtained previously by Birkner et al. (2013).
This paper develops asymptotics and approximations for ruin probabilities in a multivariate risk setting. We consider a model in which the individual reserve processes are driven by a common Markovian environmental process. We subsequently consider a regime in which the claim arrival intensity and transition rates of the environmental process are jointly sped up, and one in which there is (with overwhelming probability) maximally one transition of the environmental process in the time interval considered. The approximations are extensively tested in a series of numerical experiments.
Let $(Z_n)_{n\geqslant 0}$ be a branching process in a random environment defined by a Markov chain $(X_n)_{n\geqslant 0}$ with values in a finite state space $\mathbb X$ starting at $X_0=i \in\mathbb X$. We extend from the i.i.d. environment to the Markovian one the classical classification of the branching processes into critical and strongly, intermediate and weakly subcritical states. In all these cases, we study the asymptotic behaviour of the probability that $Z_n>0$ as $n\to+\infty$.
We study a general class of random walks driven by a uniquely ergodic Markovian environment. Under a coupling condition on the environment we obtain strong ergodicity properties and concentration inequalities for the environment as seen from the position of the walker, i.e the environment process. We also obtain ergodicity of the uniquely ergodic measure of the environment process as well as continuity as a function of the jump rates of the walker. As a consequence we obtain several limit theorems, such as law of large numbers, Einstein relation, central limit theorem and concentration propert…
We study an homogeneous irreducible markovian random walk in a square lattice of arbitrary dimension, with an antisymmetric perturbation acting only in one point. We compute exactly spatial correction to the diffusive behaviour in the asympotics of probability, in the spirit of local limit theorems for random walks.
A population has two types of individuals, each occupying an island. One of those, where individuals of type 1 live, offers a variable environment. Type 2 individuals dwell on the other island, in a constant environment. Only one-way migration (1->2) is possible. We study the asymptotics of the survival probability in critical and subcritical cases.
. Markov chains in time, such as simple random walks, are at the heart of probability. In space, due to the absence of an obvious definition of past and future, a range of definitions of Markovianity have been proposed. In this paper, after a brief review, we introduce a new concept of Markovianity that aims to combine spatial and temporal conditional independence.