Return Probabilities of Random Walks

Abstract

Associated to a random walk on $\mathbb{Z}$ and a positive integer $n$, there is a return probability of the random walk returning to the origin after $n$ steps. An interesting question is when the set of return probabilities uniquely determines the random walk. There are trivial situations where two different random walks have the same return probabilities. However, among random walks in which these situations do not occur, our main result states that the return probabilities do determine the random walk. As a corollary, we will obtain a result dealing with the representation theory of $\mathrm{U}(1)$.