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Asymptotics of cover times via Gaussian free fields: bounded-degree graphs and general trees. (English) Zbl 1316.60064
Summary: In this paper we show that on bounded degree graphs and general trees, the cover time of the simple random walk is asymptotically equal to the product of the number of edges and the square of the expected supremum of the Gaussian free field on the graph, assuming that the maximal hitting time is significantly smaller than the cover time. Previously, this was only proved for regular trees and the 2D lattice. Furthermore, for general trees, we derive exponential concentration for the cover time, which implies that the standard deviation of the cover time is bounded by the geometric mean of the cover time and the maximal hitting time.

MSC:
 60G50 Sums of independent random variables; random walks 60G60 Random fields 60G15 Gaussian processes 60J10 Markov chains (discrete-time Markov processes on discrete state spaces) 05C81 Random walks on graphs 05C05 Trees
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