Stochastic shielding and edge importance for Markov chains with timescale separation
Fig 3
An illustration of the general 3-state chain with per capita transition rates αk for k = 1, 2, 3, 4.
State 3 (black) is the observable state (or open/conducting state) of the system, and all other states are not observable (or closed/non-conducting states). By convention, we identify α1 ≡ α12, α2 ≡ α21, α3 ≡ α23, and α4 ≡ α32.