Problems in random walks in random environments

Thesis

Recent years have seen progress in the analysis of the heat kernel for certain reversible random walks in random environments. In particular the work of Barlow(2004) showed that the heat kernel for the random walk on the infinite component of supercritical bond percolation behaves in a Gaussian fashion. This heat kernel control was then used to prove a quenched functional central limit theorem. Following this work several examples have been analysed with anomalous heat kernel behaviour and, in some cases, anomalous scaling limits.

We begin by generalizing the first result - looking for sufficient conditions on the geometry of the environment that ensure standard heat kernel upper bounds hold. We prove that these conditions are satisfied with probability one in the case of the random walk on continuum percolation and use the heat kernel bounds to prove an invariance principle.

The random walk on dynamic environment is then considered. It is proven that if the environment evolves ergodically and is, in a certain sense, geometrically d-dimensional then standard on diagonal heat kernel bounds hold. Anomalous lower bounds on the heat kernel are also proven - in particular the random conductance model is shown to be "more anomalous" in the dynamic case than the static.

Finally, the reflected random walk amongst random conductances is considered. It is shown in one dimension that under the usual scaling, this walk converges to reflected Brownian motion.

Authors: Buckley, SP

• Publication date: 2011
• DOI: 10.5287/ora-vqvnpknmd
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: random walks in random environments; invariance principles; stochastic analysis
• Subjects: Probability theory and stochastic processes; Mathematics; Combinatorics