Martin T. Barlow

This introduction to random walks on infinite graphs gives particular emphasis to graphs with polynomial volume growth. It offers an overview of analytic methods, starting with the connection between random walks and electrical resistance, and then proceeding to study the use of isoperimetric and Poincaré inequalities. The book presents rough isometries and looks at the properties of a graph that are stable under these transformations. Applications include the 'type problem': determining whether a graph is transient or recurrent. The final chapters show how geometric properties of the graph can be used to establish heat kernel bounds, that is, bounds on the transition probabilities of the random walk, and it is proved that Gaussian bounds hold for graphs that are roughly isometric to Euclidean space. Aimed at graduate students in mathematics, the book is also useful for researchers as a reference for results that are hard to find elsewhere.

This is a volume of lecture notes based on three series of lectures given by visiting professors of RIMS, Kyoto University during the year-long project 'Discrete Geometric Analysis', which took place in the Japanese academic year 2012-2013. The aim of the project was to make comprehensive research on topics related to discreteness in geometry, analysis and optimization. Discrete geometric analysis is a hybrid field of several traditional disciplines, including graph theory, geometry, discrete group theory, and probability. The name of the area was coined by Toshikazu Sunada, and since being introduced, it has been extending and making new interactions with many other fields. This volume consists of three chapters: (I) Loop Erased Walks and Uniform Spanning Trees, by Martin T Barlow; (II) Combinatorial Rigidity: Graphs and Matroids in the Theory of Rigid Frameworks, by Tibor Jordán; (III) Analysis and Geometry on Groups, by Andrzej Zuk. The lecture notes are useful surveys that provide an introduction to the history and recent progress in the areas covered. They will also help researchers who work in related interdisciplinary fields to gain an understanding of the material from the viewpoint of discrete geometric analysis. Published by Mathematical Society of Japan and distributed by World Scientific Publishing Co. for all markets

This volume contains lectures given at the Saint-Flour Summer School of Probability Theory during the period 10th - 26th July, 1995. These lectures are at a postgraduate research level. They are works of reference in their domain.