Exceptional graphs for the random walk

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Abstract: If mathcalW is the simple random walk on the square lattice mathbbZ2, then mathcalW induces a random walk mathcalWG on any spanning subgraph GsubsetmathbbZ2 of the lattice as follows: viewing mathcalW as a uniformly random infinite word on the alphabet mathbfx,mathbfx,mathbfy,mathbfy, the walk mathcalWG starts at the origin and follows the directions specified by mathcalW, only accepting steps of mathcalW along which the walk mathcalWG does not exit G. For any fixed subgraph GsubsetmathbbZ2, the walk mathcalWG is distributed as the simple random walk on G, and hence mathcalWG is almost surely recurrent in the sense that mathcalWG visits every site reachable from the origin in G infinitely often. This fact naturally leads us to ask the following: does mathcalW almost surely have the property that mathcalWG is recurrent for emph{every} subgraph GsubsetmathbbZ2? We answer this question negatively, demonstrating that exceptional subgraphs exist almost surely. In fact, we show more to be true: exceptional subgraphs continue to exist almost surely for a countable collection of independent simple random walks, but on the other hand, there are almost surely no exceptional subgraphs for a branching random walk.









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