Limit Profile for the Bernoulli--Laplace Urn

Abstract

We analyse the convergence to equilibrium of the Bernoulli--Laplace urn model: initially, one urn contains $k$ red balls and a second $n-k$ blue balls; in each step, a pair of balls is chosen uniform and their locations are switched. Cutoff is known to occur at $\tfrac12 n \log \min\{k, \sqrt n\}$ with window order $n$ whenever $1 \ll k \le \tfrac12 n$. We refine this by determining the limit profile: a function $\Phi$ such that \[ d_\mathsf{TV}\bigl( \tfrac12 n \log \min\{k, \sqrt n\} + \theta n \bigr) \to \Phi(\theta) \quad\text{as}\quad n \to \infty \quad\text{for all}\quad \theta \in \mathbb R. \] Our main technical contribution, of independent interest, approximates a rescaled chain by a diffusion on $\mathbb R$ when $k \gg \sqrt n$, and uses its explicit law as a Gaussian process.