The maximal potential energy of biased random walks on trees

Abstract: The biased random walk on supercritical Galton--Watson trees is known to exhibit a multiscale phenomenon in the slow regime: the maximal displacement of the walk in the first $n$ steps is of order $(\log n)^3$, whereas the typical displacement of the walk at the $n$-th step is of order $(\log n)^2$. Our main result reveals another multiscale property of biased walks: the maximal potential energy of the biased walks is of order $(\log n)^2$ in contrast with its typical size, which is of order $\log n$. The proof relies on analyzing the intricate multiscale structure of the potential energy.