Concentration of measure and mixing for Markov chains

Abstract

We consider Markovian models on graphs with local dynamics. We show that, under suitable conditions, such Markov chains exhibit both rapid convergence to equilibrium and strong concentration of measure in the stationary distribution. We illustrate our results with applications to some known chains from computer science and statistical mechanics.

Keywords

• markov chains
• concentration of measure
• rapid mixing
• [info.info-dm] computer science [cs]/discrete mathematics [cs.dm]
• [math.math-ds] mathematics [math]/dynamical systems [math.ds]
• [math.math-co] mathematics [math]/combinatorics [math.co]