Kesten's theorem for uniformly recurrent subgroups

Abstract

We prove an inequality on the difference between the spectral radius of the Cayley graph of a group $G$ and the spectral radius of the Schreier graph $H\backslash G$ for any subgroup $H$. As an application we extend Kesten's theorem on spectral radii to uniformly recurrent subgroups and give a short proof that the result of Lyons and Peres on cycle density in Ramanujan graphs holds on average. More precisely, we show that if $\mathcal G$ is an infinite deterministic Ramanujan graph, then the time spent in short cycles by a random walk of length $n$ is $o(n)$.