Trading space for time in undirected s-t connectivity
STOC '89 Proceedings of the twenty-first annual ACM symposium on Theory of computing
A tight upper bound on the cover time for random walks on graphs
Random Structures & Algorithms
A tight lower bound on the cover time for random walks on graphs
Random Structures & Algorithms
The Cover Time of Random Regular Graphs
SIAM Journal on Discrete Mathematics
The cover time of the preferential attachment graph
Journal of Combinatorial Theory Series B
Many random walks are faster than one
Proceedings of the twentieth annual symposium on Parallelism in algorithms and architectures
Random walks, universal traversal sequences, and the complexity of maze problems
SFCS '79 Proceedings of the 20th Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science
The cover time of the giant component of a random graph
Random Structures & Algorithms
Tight Bounds for the Cover Time of Multiple Random Walks
ICALP '09 Proceedings of the 36th International Colloquium on Automata, Languages and Programming: Part I
Tight bounds for the cover time of multiple random walks
Theoretical Computer Science
Observe and remain silent (communication-less agent location discovery)
MFCS'12 Proceedings of the 37th international conference on Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science
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We study properties of multiple random walks on a graph under various assumptions of interaction between the particles. To give precise results, we make our analysis for random regular graphs. The cover time of a random walk on a random r -regular graph was studied in [6], where it was shown with high probability (whp), that for r *** 3 the cover time is asymptotic to *** r n ln n , where *** r = (r *** 1)/(r *** 2). In this paper we prove the following (whp) results. For k independent walks on a random regular graph G , the cover time C G (k ) is asymptotic to C G /k , where C G is the cover time of a single walk. For most starting positions, the expected number of steps before any of the walks meet is $\theta_r n/\binom{k}{2}$. If the walks can communicate when meeting at a vertex, we show that, for most starting positions, the expected time for k walks to broadcast a single piece of information to each other is asymptotic to 2*** r n (ln k )/k , as k ,n *** ***. We also establish properties of walks where there are two types of particles, predator and prey, or where particles interact when they meet at a vertex by coalescing, or by annihilating each other. For example, the expected extinction time of k explosive particles (k even) tends to (2ln 2) *** r n as k *** ***. The case of n coalescing particles, where one particle is initially located at each vertex, corresponds to a voter model defined as follows: Initially each vertex has a distinct opinion, and at each step each vertex changes its opinion to that of a random neighbour. The expected time for a unique opinion to emerge is the expected time for all the particles to coalesce, which is asymptotic to 2 *** r n . Combining results from the predator-prey and multiple random walk models allows us to compare expected detection time in the following cops and robbers scenarios: both the predator and the prey move randomly, the prey moves randomly and the predators stay fixed, the predators move randomly and the prey stays fixed. In all cases, with k predators and *** prey the expected detection time is *** r H *** n /k , where H *** is the ***-th harmonic number.