Reflected random walks and unstable Martin boundary

Abstract

We introduce a family of two-dimensional reflected random walks in the positive quadrant and study their Martin boundary. While the minimal boundary is systematically equal to a union of two points, the full Martin boundary exhibits an instability phenomenon, in the following sense: if some parameter associated to the model is rational (resp.\ non-rational), then the Martin boundary is countable, homeomorphic to $\mathbb Z\cup\{\pm\infty\}$ (resp.\ uncountable, homeomorphic to $\mathbb R\cup\{\pm\infty\}$). Such instability phenomena are very rare in the literature. Along the way of proving this result, we obtain several precise estimates for the Green functions of reflected random walks with escape probabilities along the boundary axes and an arbitrarily large number of inhomogeneity domains. Our methods mix probabilistic techniques and an analytic approach for random walks with large jumps in dimension two.