Space-time boundaries for random walks and their application to operator algebras

Abstract

We investigate the Martin boundary of the space-time Markov chain associated to a finitely supported random walk $(\Gamma, \mu)$ with spectral radius $\rho$ and relate it to several classical compactifications of $\Gamma$. Assuming the strong ratio-limit property, we prove that the reduced ratio-limit compactification embeds naturally into the space-time Martin boundary. We introduce the $0$-Martin boundary, which governs the behaviour of $\infty$-harmonic functions, and show that the $0$-Martin kernels arise as rescaled limits of $\lambda$-Martin kernels as $\lambda\rightarrow 0$. For symmetric random walks on hyperbolic groups, the $0$-Martin boundary naturally covers the Gromov boundary, while the cover need not be injective in general. Our main structural theorem identifies the minimal space-time Martin boundary with the disjoint union of minimal $\lambda$-Martin boundaries over $\lambda\in [0, \rho^{-1}]$ with its natural pointwise topology. As an application, we show that the noncommutative Shilov boundary of the tensor algebra of the random walk $(\Gamma, \mu)$ coincides with its Toeplitz $C^*$-algebra.