Abstract
An old argument of Royden and Tsuji is modified to give a necessary and sufficient condition for a reversible countable state Markov chain to be transient. This Royden criterion is quite convenient and can, on occasion, be used as a substitute for the criterion of Nash-Williams [6]. The result we give here yields a very simple proof that the Nash-Williams criterion implies recurrence. The Royden criterion also yields as a trivial corollary that a recurrent reversible random walk on a state space $X$ remains recurrent when it is constrained to run on a subset $X'$ of $X$. An apparently weaker criterion for transience is also given. As an application, we discuss the transience of a random walk on a horn shaped subset of $\mathbb{Z}^d$.
Citation
Terry Lyons. "A Simple Criterion for Transience of a Reversible Markov Chain." Ann. Probab. 11 (2) 393 - 402, May, 1983. https://doi.org/10.1214/aop/1176993604
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