A sharp estimate for cover times on binary trees

Abstract

We compute the second order correction for the cover time of the binary tree of depth $n$ by (continuous-time) random walk, and show that with probability approaching 1 as $n$ increases, $\sqrt{τ_{\mathrm{cov}}}=\sqrt{|E|}[\sqrt{2\log 2}\cdot n - {\log n}/{\sqrt{2\log 2}} + O((\log\logn)^8]$, thus showing that the second order correction differs from the corresponding one for the maximum of the Gaussian free field on the tree.

14 pages, no figure