Spectral measures of factor of i.i.d. processes on vertex-transitive graphs

We prove that a measure on $[-d, d]$ is the spectral measure of a factor of i.i.d. process on a vertex-transitive infinite graph if and only if it is absolutely continuous with respect to the spectral measure of the graph. Moreover, we show that the set of spectral measures of factor of i.i.d. processes and that of $\bar d_2$-limits of factor of i.i.d. processes are the same.Comment: 26 pages; proof of Proposition 9 shortene

Independence ratio and random eigenvectors in transitive graphs

A theorem of Hoffman gives an upper bound on the independence ratio of regular graphs in terms of the minimum $\lambda_{\min}$ of the spectrum of the adjacency matrix. To complement this result we use random eigenvectors to gain lower bounds in the vertex-transitive case. For example, we prove that the independence ratio of a $3$-regular transitive graph is at least $$q=\frac{1}{2}-\frac{3}{4\pi}\arccos\biggl(\frac{1-\lambda _{\min}}{4}\biggr).$$ The same bound holds for infinite transitive graphs: we construct factor of i.i.d. independent sets for which the probability that any given vertex is in the set is at least $q-o(1)$. We also show that the set of the distributions of factor of i.i.d. processes is not closed w.r.t. the weak topology provided that the spectrum of the graph is uncountable.Comment: Published at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/14-AOP952 in the Annals of Probability (http://www.imstat.org/aop/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Uniform point variance bounds in classical beta ensembles

In this paper, we give bounds on the variance of the number of points of the circular and the Gaussian $\beta$ ensemble in arcs of the unit circle or intervals of the real line. These bounds are logarithmic with respect to the renormalized length of these sets, which is expected to be optimal up to a multiplicative constant depending only on $\beta$

The right tail exponent of the Tracy-Widom-beta distribution

The Tracy-Widom beta distribution is the large dimensional limit of the top eigenvalue of beta random matrix ensembles. We use the stochastic Airy operator representation to show that as a tends to infinity the tail of the Tracy Widom distribution satisfies P(TW_beta > a) = a^(-3/4 beta+o(1)) exp(-2/3 beta a^(3/2))

Non-Liouville groups with return probability exponent at most 1/2

We construct a finitely generated group $G$ without the Liouville property such that the return probability of a random walk satisfies $p_{2n}(e,e) \gtrsim e^{-n^{1/2 + o(1)}}$. Recent results suggest that $1/2$ is indeed the smallest possible return probability exponent for non-Liouville groups. Our construction is based on permutational wreath products over tree-like Schreier graphs and the analysis of large deviations of inverted orbits on such graphs.Comment: 15 pages, 1 figure; v2: minor correction

Limits of spiked random matrices II

The top eigenvalues of rank $r$ spiked real Wishart matrices and additively perturbed Gaussian orthogonal ensembles are known to exhibit a phase transition in the large size limit. We show that they have limiting distributions for near-critical perturbations, fully resolving the conjecture of Baik, Ben Arous and P\'{e}ch\'{e} [Duke Math. J. (2006) 133 205-235]. The starting point is a new $(2r+1)$-diagonal form that is algebraically natural to the problem; for both models it converges to a certain random Schr\"{o}dinger operator on the half-line with $r\times r$ matrix-valued potential. The perturbation determines the boundary condition and the low-lying eigenvalues describe the limit, jointly as the perturbation varies in a fixed subspace. We treat the real, complex and quaternion ($\beta=1,2,4$) cases simultaneously. We further characterize the limit laws in terms of a diffusion related to Dyson's Brownian motion, or alternatively a linear parabolic PDE; here $\beta$ appears simply as a parameter. At $\beta=2$, the PDE appears to reconcile with known Painlev\'{e} formulas for these $r$-parameter deformations of the GUE Tracy-Widom law.Comment: Published at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/15-AOP1033 in the Annals of Probability (http://www.imstat.org/aop/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

The bead process for beta ensembles

The bead process introduced by Boutillier is a countable interlacing of the determinantal sine-kernel point processes. We construct the bead process for general sine beta processes as an infinite dimensional Markov chain whose transition mechanism is explicitly described. We show that this process is the microscopic scaling limit in the bulk of the Hermite beta corner process introduced by Gorin and Shkolnikov, generalizing the process of the minors of the Gaussian unitary and orthogonal ensembles. In order to prove our results, we use bounds on the variance of the point counting of the circular and the Gaussian beta ensembles, proven in a companion paper

Patterns in Sinai's walk

Sinai's random walk in random environment shows interesting patterns on the exponential time scale. We characterize the patterns that appear on infinitely many time scales after appropriate rescaling (a functional law of iterated logarithm). The curious rate function captures the difference between one-sided and two-sided behavior.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/11-AOP724 the Annals of Probability (http://www.imstat.org/aop/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org