Rate of escape on the lamplighter tree (Q2655978)

This paper deals with a homogeneous tree \(\mathcal T_q\) of degree \(q\geq3\), where at each vertex sits a lamp, which can be switched on or off. Initially, all lamps are off. We think of a lamplighter walking randomly along the tree and switching lamps on or off. Whenever he stands at a vertex \(\mathcal T_q\) he tosses a coin and decides to change the lamp state at his actual position or to travel to a random neighbor vertex. This is modeled by a transient Markov chain \((\mathbb{Z}_n)_{n\geq0}\), which represents the position of the lamplighter and the lamp configuration at time \(n\). A natural length function \(\ell((\eta, x))\), where \(\eta\) is a configuration and \(x\in\mathcal T_q\) is given by the length of the shortest path for the lamplighter standing at \(x\) to switch all lamps off and return to the starting vertex. By transience, our random walk escapes to infinity. The aim of this paper is to estimate the almost sure, constant limit \(\ell=\lim_{n\to\infty}\ell(\mathbb{Z}_n)/n\) which describes the speed of the random walk. The number \(\ell\) is called the rate of escape or the drift.