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We prove a sharp Bernstein inequality for general-state-space and not necessarily reversible Markov chains. It is sharp in the sense that the variance proxy term is optimal. Our result covers the classical Bernstein's inequality for independent random variables as a special case.

No abstract uploaded!

No abstract uploaded!

Kaimanovich (2003) [9] introduced the concept of augmented tree on the symbolic space of a selfsimilar set. It is hyperbolic in the sense of Gromov, and it was shown by Lau and Wang (2009) [12] that under the open set condition, a self-similar set can be identified with the hyperbolic boundary of the tree. In the paper, we investigate in detail a class of simple augmented trees and the Lipschitz equivalence of such trees. The main purpose is to use this to study the Lipschitz equivalence problem of the totally disconnected self-similar sets which has been undergoing some extensive development recently.