Rates of convergence to equilibrium for potlatch and smoothing processes

Abstract

We analyze the local and global smoothing rates of the smoothing process and obtain convergence rates to stationarity for the dual process known as the potlatch process. For general finite graphs we connect the smoothing and convergence rates to the spectral gap of the associated Markov chain. We perform a more detailed analysis of these processes on the torus. Polynomial corrections to the smoothing rates are obtained. They show that local smoothing happens faster than global smoothing. These polynomial rates translate to rates of convergence to stationarity in ${\mathit{L}}^2$-Wasserstein distance for the potlatch process on ${\mathbb{Z}}^{\mathit{d}}$.