An Exercise (?) in Fourier Analysis on the Heisenberg Group

Daniel Bump, Persi Diaconis, Angela Hicks, Laurent Miclo, Harold Widom

Published 2015-02-14Version 1

Let H(n) be the group of 3x3 uni-uppertriangular matrices with entries in Z/nZ, the integers mod n. We show that the simple random walk converges to the uniform distribution in order n^2 steps. The argument uses Fourier analysis and is surprisingly challenging. It introduces novel techniques for bounding the spectrum which are useful for a variety of walks on a variety of groups.