Almost invariance of distributions for random walks on groups

Abstract

We study the neighborhoods of a typical point $$Z_n$$ visited at n-th step of a random walk, determined by the condition that the transition probabilities stay close to $$\mu ^{*n}(Z_n)$$ . If such neighborhood contains a ball of radius $$C \sqrt{n}$$ , we say that the random walk has almost invariant transition probabilities. We prove that simple random walks on wreath products of $$\mathbb {Z}$$ with finite groups have almost invariant distributions. A weaker version of almost invariance implies a necessary condition of Ozawa’s criterion for the property $$H_\mathrm{FD}$$ . We define and study the radius of almost invariance. We estimate this radius for random walks on iterated wreath products and show this radius can be asymptotically strictly smaller than n / L(n), where L(n) denotes the drift function of the random walk. We show that the radius of individual almost invariance of a simple random walk on the wreath product of $$\mathbb {Z}^2$$ with a finite group is asymptotically strictly larger than n / L(n). Finally, we show the existence of groups such that the radius of almost invariance is smaller than a given function, but remains unbounded. We also discuss possible limiting distribution of ratios of transition probabilities on non almost invariant scales.