Collisions of random walks

Abstract

A recurrent graph G has the infinite collision property if two independent random walks on G, started at the same point, collide infinitely often a.s. We give a simple criterion in terms of Green functions for a graph to have this property, and use it to prove that a critical Galton-Watson tree with finite variance conditioned to survive, the incipient infinite cluster in Zd with d ≥ 19 and the uniform spanning tree in Z2 all have the infinite collision property. For power-law combs and spherically symmetric trees, we determine precisely the phase boundary for the infinite collision property. © 2012 Association des Publications de l'Institut Henri Poincaré.