The dual Burnside process

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Author: Feng, Ivan Z.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Feng, Ivan Z.
author_facet Feng, Ivan Z.
contents The Burnside process is a classical Markov chain for sampling uniformly from group orbits. We introduce the dual Burnside process, obtained by interchanging the roles of group elements and states. This dual chain has stationary law $π(g)\propto |X_g|$, is reversible, and admits a matrix factorization $Q=AB$, $K=BA$ with the classical Burnside kernel $K$. As a consequence the two chains share all nonzero eigenvalues and have mixing times that differ by at most one step. We further establish universal Doeblin floors, orbit- and conjugacy-class lumpings, exact stabilizer/fixed-set quotient pairs, and transfer principles between $Q$ and $K$. We analyze the explicit examples of the value-permutation model $S_k$ acting on $[k]^n$ and the coordinate-permutation model $S_n$ acting on $[k]^n$. In the value-permutation model, for fixed $k\ge3$, the dual fixed-symbol-set quotient has $2^k-k-1$ states, independent of $n$, preserves the full nonzero spectrum, and has limiting nontrivial spectral radius $1/2$. These results show that the dual chain provides both a conceptual mirror to the classical Burnside process and a genuinely useful compression mechanism for symmetry-aware Markov chain Monte Carlo.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_25202
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle The dual Burnside process
Feng, Ivan Z.
Probability
Combinatorics
Group Theory
60J10 (Primary), 05E18, 60B15, 20B30, 05A18 (Secondary)
The Burnside process is a classical Markov chain for sampling uniformly from group orbits. We introduce the dual Burnside process, obtained by interchanging the roles of group elements and states. This dual chain has stationary law $π(g)\propto |X_g|$, is reversible, and admits a matrix factorization $Q=AB$, $K=BA$ with the classical Burnside kernel $K$. As a consequence the two chains share all nonzero eigenvalues and have mixing times that differ by at most one step. We further establish universal Doeblin floors, orbit- and conjugacy-class lumpings, exact stabilizer/fixed-set quotient pairs, and transfer principles between $Q$ and $K$. We analyze the explicit examples of the value-permutation model $S_k$ acting on $[k]^n$ and the coordinate-permutation model $S_n$ acting on $[k]^n$. In the value-permutation model, for fixed $k\ge3$, the dual fixed-symbol-set quotient has $2^k-k-1$ states, independent of $n$, preserves the full nonzero spectrum, and has limiting nontrivial spectral radius $1/2$. These results show that the dual chain provides both a conceptual mirror to the classical Burnside process and a genuinely useful compression mechanism for symmetry-aware Markov chain Monte Carlo.
title The dual Burnside process
topic Probability
Combinatorics
Group Theory
60J10 (Primary), 05E18, 60B15, 20B30, 05A18 (Secondary)
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.25202