Cover time for the frog model on trees

Abstract

The frog model is a branching random walk on a graph in which particles branch only at unvisited sites. Consider an initial particle density of $\mu$ on the full $d$-ary tree of height $n$. If $\mu= \Omega( d^2)$, all of the vertices are visited in time $\Theta(n\log n)$ with high probability. Conversely, if $\mu = O(d)$ the cover time is $\exp(\Theta(\sqrt n))$ with high probability.