Recurrence of Markov chain traces

Abstract

It is shown that transient graphs for the simple random walk do not admit a nearest neighbor transient Markov chain (not necessarily a reversible one), that crosses all edges with positive probability, while there is such chain for the square grid ${\mathbb{Z}}^2$. In particular, the $d$-dimensional grid ${\mathbb{Z}}^d$ admits such a Markov chain only when $d=2$. For $d=2$ we present a relevant example due to Gady Kozma, while the general statement for transient graphs is obtained by proving that for every transient irreducible Markov chain on a countable state space, which admits a stationary measure, its trace is a.s. recurrent for simple random walk. The case that the Markov chain is reversible is due to Gurel-Gurevich, Lyons and the first named author (2007). We exploit recent results in potential theory of non-reversible Markov chains in order to extend their result to the non-reversible setup.

35 pages