Uniform mixing time for Random Walk on Lamplighter Graphs

TL;DR

This paper establishes tight bounds on the uniform mixing time of lamplighter random walks on various graphs, including hypercubes and tori, revealing how graph structure influences mixing behavior.

Contribution

It provides the first precise asymptotic bounds for the uniform mixing time of lamplighter chains on key classes of graphs, extending understanding of their convergence properties.

Findings

Mixing time on hypercube is Θ(d 2^d)

Mixing time on torus is Θ(d n^d) for d ≥ 3

Concentration estimates for local times of random walk are developed

Abstract

Suppose that $\CG$ is a finite, connected graph and $X$ is a lazy random walk on $\CG$. The lamplighter chain $X^\diamond$ associated with $X$ is the random walk on the wreath product $\CG^\diamond = \Z_2 \wr \CG$, the graph whose vertices consist of pairs $(f,x)$ where $f$ is a labeling of the vertices of $\CG$ by elements of $\Z_2$ and $x$ is a vertex in $\CG$. There is an edge between $(f,x)$ and $(g,y)$ in $\CG^\diamond$ if and only if $x$ is adjacent to $y$ in $\CG$ and $f(z) = g(z)$ for all $z \neq x,y$. In each step, $X^\diamond$ moves from a configuration $(f,x)$ by updating $x$ to $y$ using the transition rule of $X$ and then sampling both $f(x)$ and $f(y)$ according to the uniform distribution on $\Z_2$; $f(z)$ for $z \neq x,y$ remains unchanged. We give matching upper and lower bounds on the uniform mixing time of $X^\diamond$ provided $\CG$ satisfies mild hypotheses. In particular, when $\CG$ is the hypercube $\Z_2^d$, we show that the uniform mixing time of $X^\diamond$ is $\Theta(d 2^d)$. More generally, we show that when $\CG$ is a torus $\Z_n^d$ for $d \geq 3$, the uniform mixing time of $X^\diamond$ is $\Theta(d n^d)$ uniformly in $n$ and $d$. A critical ingredient for our proof is a concentration estimate for the local time of random walk in a subset of vertices.