Random walks on groups and superlinear-divergent geodesics

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This article studies the asymptotic behavior of random walks on finitely generated groups that admit a superlinear-divergent geodesic, in the sense introduced by \textit{A. Goldsborough} and \textit{A. Sisto} [``Markov chains on hyperbolic-like groups and quasi-isometries, Preprint, \url{arXiv:2111.09837}]. A geodesic is said to exhibit superlinear divergence if every path that avoids a tubular neighborhood of it must have length growing faster than linearly in terms of the distance between the projections of its endpoints. This condition is shown to be quasi-isometry invariant and allows one to implement the pivotal time construction of \textit{S. Gouëzel} [Tunis. J. Math. 4, No. 4, 635--671 (2022; Zbl 1525.60014)].\N\NThe main result establishes a central limit theorem for the word norm \(|Z_n|\) of the \(n\)-th step of a simple random walk on such a group \(G\), under minimal geometric assumptions, namely, the existence of a bi-infinite superlinear-divergent geodesic.\N\NThe authors refine the previous framework of Goldsborough and Sisto [loc. cit.] by removing any reliance on group actions on hyperbolic spaces, working instead in a purely coarse-geometric setting. They prove a local-to-global alignment principle for divergent geodesics (Proposition~3.3) and show that sufficiently many such alignments lead to a central limit theorem. The variance in the limiting distribution is proved to be positive under symmetry and non-amenability assumptions.\N\NAn application is provided to right-angled Coxeter groups of thickness at least \(2\), where periodic geodesics with polynomial divergence furnish the necessary structure. The analysis is complemented by a discussion of the quasi-isometry invariance of the setting (Corollary~2.3) and a comparison with the theory of strongly contracting geodesics (Appendix~B), illustrating that the two approaches are logically independent.











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