Markov chains on hypercubes: Spectral representations and several majorization relations

Various Markov chains on hypercubes ??are considered and their spectral representations are presentend in terms of Kronecker products. Special attention is given to random walks on the graphs ??(l = 1,n ? 2), where the vertex set is ?? and two vertices are connected if and only if their Hamming distance is at most l. It is shown that λ(??₁)>λ(??₁)>λ(??_n?1)>λ(??_n),l=2,…,n?2, where λ (??_I) is the specturum of the random walk on ??I, and > denotes the majorization ordering. A similar majorization relation is established for graphs V₁ where two veritces are connected if and only if their Hamming distance is exactly l. Some applications to mean times of these random walks are given. © 1993 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.