Rotor walks on general trees

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 either zero or the random walk escape probability, and undergoes a discontinuous phase transition between the two as the distribution is varied. In the critical case there are no escapes, but the walker's maximum distance from the root grows doubly exponentially with the number of visits to the root. We also prove that there exist trees of bounded degree for which the proportion of escapes eventually exceeds the escape probability by arbitrarily large o(1) functions. No larger discrepancy is possible, while for regular trees the discrepancy is at most logarithmic.Comment: 32 page

Induced fractional valley number in graphene with topological defects

We report on the possibility of valley number fractionalization in graphene with a topological defect that is accounted for in Dirac equation by a pseudomagnetic field. The valley number fractionalization is attributable to an imbalance on the number of one particle states in one of the two Dirac points with respect to the other and it is related to the flux of the pseudomagnetic field. We also discuss the analog effect the topological defect might lead in the induced spin polarization of the charge carriers in graphene

Deterministic Thinning of Finite Poisson Processes

Let Pi and Gamma be homogeneous Poisson point processes on a fixed set of finite volume. We prove a necessary and sufficient condition on the two intensities for the existence of a coupling of Pi and Gamma such that Gamma is a deterministic function of Pi, and all points of Gamma are points of Pi. The condition exhibits a surprising lack of monotonicity. However, in the limit of large intensities, the coupling exists if and only if the expected number of points is at least one greater in Pi than in Gamma.Comment: 16 pages; 1 figur

On the motive of certain subvarieties of fixed flags

We compute de Chow motive of certain subvarieties of the flags manifold and show that it is an Artin motive.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figure