Passage time from four to two blocks of opinions in the voter model and walks in the quarter plane

A random walk in $\mathbf{Z}_+^2$ spatially homogeneous in the interior, absorbed at the axes, starting from an arbitrary point $(i_0,j_0)$ and with step probabilities drawn on Fig. 1 is considered. The trivariate generating function of probabilities that the random walk hits a given point $(i,j) \in \mathbf{Z}_+^2 $ at a given time $k\ge 0$ is made explicit. Probabilities of absorption at a given time $k$ and at a given axis are found, and their precise asymptotic is derived as the time $k\rightarrow \infty $ . The equivalence of two typical ways of conditioning this random walk to never reach the axes is established. The results are also applied to the analysis of the voter model with two candidates and initially, in the population $\mathbf{Z}$ , four connected blocks of same opinions. Then, a citizen changes his mind at a rate proportional to the number of his neighbors that disagree with him. Namely, the passage from four to two blocks of opinions is studied.     

On the functions counting walks with small steps in the quarter plane

Models of spatially homogeneous walks in the quarter plane $\mathbf{ Z}_{+}^{2}$ with steps taken from a subset $\mathcal{S}$ of the set of jumps to the eight nearest neighbors are considered. The generating function (x,y,z)?Q(x,y;z) of the numbers q(i,j;n) of such walks starting at the origin and ending at $(i,j) \in\mathbf{ Z}_{+}^{2}$ after n steps is studied. For all non-singular models of walks, the functions x?Q(x,0;z) and y?Q(0,y;z) are continued as multi-valued functions on C having infinitely many meromorphic branches, of which the set of poles is identified. The nature of these functions is derived from this result: namely, for all the 51 walks which admit a certain infinite group of birational transformations of C ², the interval $]0,1/|\mathcal{S}|[$ of variation of z splits into two dense subsets such that the functions x?Q(x,0;z) and y?Q(0,y;z) are shown to be holonomic for any z from the one of them and non-holonomic for any z from the other. This entails the non-holonomy of (x,y,z)?Q(x,y;z), and therefore proves a conjecture of Bousquet-Mélou and Mishna in Contemp. Math. 520:1?C40 (2010).     

Martin Boundary of Killed Random Walks on Isoradial Graphs

Potential Analysis - We consider killed planar random walks on isoradial graphs. Contrary to the lattice case, isoradial graphs are not translation invariant, do not admit any group structure and...