We study the asymptotic behaviour of random walks on topological abelian groups $G$. Our main result is a sufficient condition for one random walk to overtake another in the stochastic order induced by any suitably large positive cone $G_+ subseteq G$, assuming that both walks have Radon distributions and compactly supported steps. We explain in which sense our sufficient condition is very close to a necessary one. Our result is a direct application of a recently proven theorem of real algebra, namely a Positivstellensatz for preordered semirings. It is due to Aubrun and Nechita in the one-dimensional case, but new already for $R^n$ with $n > 1$. We use our result to derive a formula for the rate at which the probabilities of a random walk decay relative to those of another, again for walks on $G$ with compactly supported Radon steps. In the case where one walk is a constant, this formula specializes to a version of Cramers large deviation theorem.
Download