Drift and joint minimal displacement for groups acting on hyperbolic spaces

Abstract

We obtain a uniform lower bound for the drift of random walks on hyperbolic spaces in terms of joint minimal displacement. Our main theorem applies to weakly acylindrical actions on Gromov-hyperbolic spaces and is quantitative in all relevant constants. For discrete isometry groups of Hadamard manifolds with pinched negative curvature, the required assumptions are automatically satisfied by the Margulis lemma. This yields uniform gaps at zero in drift spectra for pinched negatively curved Hadamard manifolds, hyperbolic groups, and mapping class groups acting on curve graphs.