Computable bounds for geometric convergence rates of Markov chains

Recent results for geometrically ergodic Markov chains show that there exist constants R ! 1; ae ! 1 such that sup jfjV j Z P n (x; dy)f(y) \Gamma Z ß(dy)f(y)j RV (x)ae n where ß is the invariant probability measure and V is any solution of the drift inequalities Z P (x; dy)V (y) V (x) + b1l C (x) which are known to guarantee geometric convergence for ! 1; b ! 1 and a suitable small set C. In this paper we identify for the first time computable bounds on R and ae in terms of ; b and the minorizing constants which guarantee the smallness of C. In the simplest case where C is an atom ff with P (ff; ff) ffi we can choose any ae ? # where [1 \Gamma #] \Gamma1 = 1 (1 \Gamma ) 2 h 1 \Gamma + b + b 2 + i ff (b(1 \Gamma ) + b 2 ) i and i ff i 34 \Gamma 8ffi 2 ffi 3 ji b 1 \Gamma j 2 ; and we can then choose R ae=[ae \Gamma #]. The bounds for general small sets C are similar but more complex. We apply these to simple queueing models and Markov chain Mo..