Cutpoints of (1,2) and (2,1) random walks on the lattice of positive half line

Abstract: In this paper, we study (1,2) and (2,1) random walks in varying environments on the lattice of positive half line. We assume that the transition probabilities at site $n$ are asymptotically constants as $n\rightarrow\infty.$ For (1,2) random walk, we get some elaborate asymptotic behaviours of various escape probabilities and hitting probabilities of the walk. Such observations and some delicate analysis of continued fractions and the product of nonnegative matrices enable us to give criteria for finiteness of the number of cutpoints of both (1,2) and (2,1) random walks, which generalize E. Cs\'aki, A. F\"oldes and P. R\'ev\'esz [J. Theor. Probab. 23: 624-638 (2010)] and H.-M. Wang [Markov Processes Relat. Fields 25: 125-148 (2019)]. For near-recurrent random walks, whenever there are infinitely many cutpoints, we also study the asymptotics of the number of cutpoints in $[0,n].$