The mean number of sites visited by a pinned random walk

This paper concerns the number Z _n of sites visited up to time n by a random walk S _n having zero mean and moving on the d-dimensional square lattice Z ^d . Asymptotic evaluation of the conditional expectation of Z _n given that S ₀ = 0 and S _n = x is carried out under 2 + δ moment conditions (0 ≤ δ ≤ 2) in the cases d = 2, 3. It gives an explicit form of the leading term and reasonable estimates of the remainder term (depending on δ) valid uniformly in each parabolic region of (x, n). In the case x = 0 the problem has been studied for the simple random walk and its analogue for Brownian motion; the estimates obtained here are finer than or comparable to those found in previous works. Supported in part by Monbukagakusho grand-in-aid no. 15540109.