On the Escape of a Random Walk From Two Pieces of a Tripartite Set

Abstract

Let $\{A, B, C\}$ be a partition of a sample space $\Omega$. For a random walk $S_n = x + \sum_{j=1}^n X_j$ starting at $x \in A$, we find estimates for the Green's function $G_{A \cup B}(x,y)$ and the hitting time $E^x(T_C)$ for $x, y \in A \cup B$, with interest in the case where $C$ "separates" $A$ and $B$ in a sense (e.g. the probability of jumping from $A$ to $B$, or vice versa, before hitting $C$, is small).