Green kernel estimates and the full Martin boundary for random walks on lamplighter groups and Diestel-Leader graphs (Q2573631)

The Diestel-Leader graph DL\((q,r)\), \(q,r\geq 2\), is the horocyclic product of the homogeneous trees \(T_q\) and \(T_r\) with degrees \(q+1\) and \(r+1\), respectively. In case \(q=r\), DL\((q,q)\) is the Cayley graph of the lamplighter group. The authors consider the random walk with transition matrix \(P_{\alpha}\) on DL\((q,r)\). This is a simple random walk with an additional drift parameter \(\alpha\in (0,1)\) which can be interpreted as a lamplighter walk in an extended sense. The first main result is the asymptotic behavior of the Green kernel \(G(x,y)\) associated with \(P_{\alpha}\) when the graph distance \(d(x,y)\to \infty\). The asymptotics turn out to be different along different direction of moving to the infinity. Moreover, the drift-free case (\(\alpha=1/2\)) and drift cases (\(\alpha \neq 1/2\)) are different. The second main result, based on the Green kernel asymptotics, is a description of the full Martin compactification of the considered random walk on DL\((q,r)\). In case \(\alpha=1/2\), the Martin compactification is identified with the closure of DL\((q,r)\) in the product \(\hat{T}_q \times \hat{T}_r\) where \(\hat{T}_q\) and \(\hat{T}_r\) are the end-compactifications of the corresponding trees. For \(\alpha\neq 1/2\) the Martin compactification is larger than the geometric one, and is identified with the closure of DL\((q,r)\) in \(\tilde{T}_q \times \tilde{T}_r\). Here \(\tilde{T}_q\) and \(\tilde{T}_r\) are the horocyclic compactifications of corresponding trees. Moreover, in both cases the authors identify minimal Martin boundary, thus recovering results from \textit{W. Woess} [Comb. Probab. Comput. 14, 415--433 (2005; Zbl 1066.05075)].