arXiv subjects

Douglas Rizzolo

Publications and source records attributed to Douglas Rizzolo.

33 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2018

Projections of the Aldous chain on binary trees: Intertwining and consistency

Consider the Aldous Markov chain on the space of rooted binary trees with $n$ labeled leaves in which at each transition a uniform random leaf is deleted and reattached to a uniform random edge. Now, fix $1\le k < n$ and project the leaf mass onto the subtree spanned by the first $k$ leaves. This yields a binary tree with edge weights that we call a "decorated $k$-tree with total mass $n$." We introduce label swapping dynamics for the Aldous chain so that, when it runs in stationarity, the decorated $k$-trees evolve as Markov chains themselves, and are projectively consistent over $k\le n$. The construction of projectively consistent chains is a crucial step in the construction of the Aldous diffusion on continuum trees by the present authors, which is the $n\rightarrow \infty$ continuum analogue of the Aldous chain and will be taken up elsewhere. Some of our results have been generalized to Ford's alpha model trees.

math.PR↗

arXiv2017

Asymptotic distribution of fixed points of pattern-avoiding involutions

For a variety of pattern-avoiding classes, we describe the limiting distribution for the number of fixed points for involutions chosen uniformly at random from that class. In particular we consider monotone patterns of arbitrary length as well as all patterns of length 3. For monotone patterns we utilize the connection with standard Young tableaux with at most $k$ rows and involutions avoiding a monotone pattern of length $k$. For every pattern of length 3 we give the bivariate generating function with respect to fixed points for the involutions that avoid that pattern, and where applicable apply tools from analytic combinatorics to extract information about the limiting distribution from the generating function. Many well-known distributions appear.

math.CO↗

arXiv2017

Diffusions on a space of interval partitions with Poisson-Dirichlet stationary distributions

We construct a pair of related diffusions on a space of interval partitions of the unit interval $[0,1]$ that are stationary with the Poisson-Dirichlet laws with parameters (1/2,0) and (1/2,1/2) respectively. These are two particular cases of a general construction of such processes obtained by decorating the jumps of a spectrally positive Lévy process with independent squared Bessel excursions. The processes of ranked interval lengths of our partitions are members of a two parameter family of diffusions introduced by Ethier and Kurtz (1981) and Petrov (2009). The latter diffusions are continuum limits of up-down Markov chains on Chinese restaurant processes. Our construction is also a step towards describing a diffusion on the space of real trees whose existence has been conjectured by Aldous.

math.PR↗

arXiv2016

Uniform control of local times of spectrally positive stable processes

We establish two results about local times of spectrally positive stable processes. The first is a general approximation result, uniform in space and on compact time intervals, in a model where each jump of the stable process may be marked by a random path. The second gives moment control on the Hölder constant of the local times, uniformly across a compact spatial interval and in certain random time intervals. For the latter, we introduce the notion of a Lévy process restricted to a compact interval, which is a variation of Lambert's Lévy process confined in a finite interval and of Pistorius' doubly reflected process. We use the results of this paper to exhibit a class of path-continuous branching processes of Crump-Mode-Jagers type with continuum genealogical structure. A further motivation for this study lies in the construction of diffusion processes in spaces of interval partitions and R-trees, which we explore in forthcoming articles.

math.PR↗

arXiv2016

Fixed points of 321-avoiding permutations

We describe the distribution of the number and location of the fixed points of permu- tations that avoid the pattern 321 via a bijection with rooted plane trees on n + 1 vertices. Using the local limit theorem for Galton-Watson trees, we are able to give an explicit description of the limit of this distribution.

math.CO↗

arXiv2016

A random flight process associated to a Lorentz gas with variable density in a gravitational field

We investigate the random flight process that arises as the Boltzmann-Grad limit of a random scatterer Lorentz gas with variable scatterer density in a gravitational field. For power function densities we show how the parameters of the model determine recurrence or transience of the vertical component of the trajectory. Finally, our methods show that, with appropriate scaling of space, time and the density of obstacles, the trajectory of the particle converges to a diffusion with explicitly given parameters.

math.PR↗

arXiv2015

Pattern-avoiding permutations and Brownian excursion Part I: Shapes and fluctuations

Permutations that avoid given patterns are among the most classical objects in combinatorics and have strong connections to many fields of mathematics, computer science and biology. In this paper we study the scaling limits of a random permutation avoiding a pattern of length 3 and their relations to Brownian excursion. Exploring this connection to Brownian excursion allows us to strengthen the recent results of Madras and Pehlivan, and Miner and Pak as well as to understand many of the interesting phenomena that had previously gone unexplained.

math.PR↗

arXiv2015

Pattern-avoiding permutations and Brownian excursion, Part II: Fixed points

Permutations that avoid given patterns are among the most classical objects in combinatorics and have strong connections to many fields of mathematics, computer science and biology. In this paper we study fixed points of both 123- and 231-avoiding permutations. We find an exact description for a scaling limit of the empirical distribution of fixed points in term of Brownian excursion. This builds on the connections between pattern-avoiding permutations and Brownian excursion developed in Part I of this series and strengthens the recent results of Elizalde (2012) and Miner and Pak (2014) on fixed points of pattern-avoiding permutations.

math.PR↗

arXiv2015

The free path in a high velocity random flight process associated to a Lorentz gas in an external field

We investigate the asymptotic behavior of the free path of a variable density random flight model in an external field as the initial velocity of the particle goes to infinity. The random flight models we study arise naturally as the Boltzmann-Grad limit of a random Lorentz gas in the presence of an external field. By analyzing the time duration of the free path, we obtain exact forms for the asymptotic mean and variance of the free path in terms of the external field and the density of scatterers. As a consequence, we obtain a diffusion approximation for the joint process of the particle observed at reflection times and the amount of time spent in free flight.

math.PR↗

arXiv2013

Regenerative tree growth: structural results and convergence

We introduce regenerative tree growth processes as consistent families of random trees with n labelled leaves, n>=1, with a regenerative property at branch points. This framework includes growth processes for exchangeably labelled Markov branching trees, as well as non-exchangeable models such as the alpha-theta model, the alpha-gamma model and all restricted exchangeable models previously studied. Our main structural result is a representation of the growth rule by a sigma-finite dislocation measure kappa on the set of partitions of the natural numbers extending Bertoin's notion of exchangeable dislocation measures from the setting of homogeneous fragmentations. We use this representation to establish necessary and sufficient conditions on the growth rule under which we can apply results by Haas and Miermont for unlabelled and not necessarily consistent trees to establish self-similar random trees and residual mass processes as scaling limits. While previous studies exploited some form of exchangeability, our scaling limit results here only require a regularity condition on the convergence of asymptotic frequencies under kappa, in addition to a regular variation condition.

math.PR↗

arXiv2013

Scaling limits of Markov branching trees and Galton-Watson trees conditioned on the number of vertices with out-degree in a given set

We generalize recent results of Haas and Miermont to obtain scaling limits of Markov branching trees whose size is specified by the number of nodes whose out-degree lies in a given set. We then show that this implies that the scaling limit of finite variance Galton-Watson trees condition on the number of nodes whose out-degree lies in a given set is the Brownian continuum random tree. The key to this is a generalization of the classical Otter-Dwass formula.

math.PR↗

arXiv2013

Schröder's problems and scaling limits of random trees

In a classic paper Schröder posed four combinatorial problems about the number of certain types of bracketings of words and sets. Here we address what these bracketings look like on average. For each of the four problems we prove that a uniform pick from the appropriate set of bracketings, when considered as a tree, has the Brownian continuum random tree as its scaling limit as the size of the word or set goes to infinity.

math.PR↗

arXiv2013

A Tree Sperner Lemma

In this paper we prove a combinatorial theorem for finite labellings of trees, and show that it is equivalent to a theorem for finite covers of metric trees and a fixed point theorem on metric trees. We trace how these connections mimic the equivalence of the Brouwer fixed point theorem with the classical KKM lemma and Sperner's lemma. We also draw connections to a KKM-type theorem about infinite covers of metric trees and fixed point theorems for non-compact metric trees. Finally, we develop a new KKM-type theorem for cycles, and discuss interesting social consequences, including an application in voting theory.

math.CO↗

arXiv2013

Strange uniform random variables

In probability theory, there is a tendency to treat one random variable with a given distribution as being just as good as any other. By and large this is fine because probability is (mostly) concerned with distributional properties of random variables. However, every now and again we are forced to deal with non-distributional properties. In this paper we investigate how different random variables with the same distribution can be. Specifically, we construct random variables that are all uniformly distributed on the unit interval, but that nonetheless have strikingly different properties.

math.PR↗

arXiv2006

A fixed point theorem for the infinite-dimensional simplex

We define the infinite dimensional simplex to be the closure of the convex hull of the standard basis vectors in R^infinity, and prove that this space has the 'fixed point property': any continuous function from the space into itself has a fixed point. Our proof is constructive, in the sense that it can be used to find an approximate fixed point; the proof relies on elementary analysis and Sperner's lemma. The fixed point theorem is shown to imply Schauder's fixed point theorem on infinite-dimensional compact convex subsets of normed spaces.

math.GN↗