The Exact Mixing Time for Trees with Fixed Diameter

Abstract

We characterize the extremal structure for the exact mixing time for random walks on trees $T_{n,d}$ of order $n$ with diameter $d$. Given a graph $G=(V,E)$, let $H(v,\pi)$ denote the expected length of an optimal stopping rule from vertex $v$ to the stationary distributon $\pi$. We show that the quantity $\max_{G \in T_{n,d} } T_{\mbox{mix}}(G) = \max_{G \in T_{n,d} } \max_{v \in V} H(v,\pi)$ is achieved uniquely by the balanced double broom.