The locally free group drift conjecture

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Let LFn{\cal LF}_n be a locally free group, and consider its random walk with word length KK and drift ll, the limiting expected normalized word length. Let T(w)T(w) be the roof of a word ww, and let E#T(w)E\#T(w) be its expected size. Locally free group drift conjecture. For n≫1n\gg 1, the expected drift is

l=23.l=\frac{2}{3}.

The preceding calculation gives the drift as l=(2−α)/(3−α)l=(2-\alpha)/(3-\alpha), where α\alpha measures the asymmetry between roof-increasing and roof-decreasing cancellations; the conjectured value follows when the two conditional effects balance. No resolution is given in the source.

References

Primary source

A. M. Vershik, S. Nechaev and R. Bikbov, “Statistical properties of braid groups in locally free approximation”, arXiv:math/9905190 (1999).

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