Heat-bath random walks with Markov bases

Abstract

Graphs on lattice points are studied whose edges come from a finite set of allowed moves of arbitrary length. We show that the diameter of these graphs on fibers of a fixed integer matrix can be bounded from above by a constant. We then study the mixing behaviour of heat-bath random walks on these graphs. We also state explicit conditions on the set of moves so that the heat-bath random walk, a generalization of the Glauber dynamics, is an expander in fixed dimension.