Mixing time for the Repeated Balls into Bins dynamics

Abstract

We estimate the mixing time of the a nonreversible finite Markov chain called Repeated Balls-into-Bins (RBB) process. This process is a discrete time conservative interacting particle system with parallel updates. Place initially in $L$ bins $rL$ balls, where $r$ is a fixed positive constant. At each time step a ball is taken from each non-empty bin. Then \emph{all the balls} are uniformly reassigned into bins. We prove that the mixing time of the RBB process depends linearly on the maximum occupation number of balls of the initial state. Thus if the initial configuration is such that the maximum occupation number of balls is of order $L$ then the mixing time is of the same correct order. While if the initial configuration is more diluted then the equilibrium is reached in a time of order $(\log L)^c$.