We examine the behavior of $n$ Brownian particles diffusing on the real line with bounded, measurable drift and bounded, piecewise continuous diffusion coefficients that depend on the current configuration of particles. Sufficient conditions are established for the absence and for the presence of triple collisions among the particles. As an application to the Atlas model for equity markets, we study a special construction of such systems of diffusing particles using Brownian motions with reflection on polyhedral domains.
Brownian particles in electrostatic interaction may pairwise collide when the interaction parameter is small. But multiple collisions are never possible.
Consider a finite system of competing Brownian particles on the real line. Each particle moves as a Brownian motion, with drift and diffusion coefficients depending only on its current rank relative to the other particles. We find a sufficient condition for a.s. absence of a total collision (when all particles collide) and of other types of collisions, say of the three lowest-ranked particles. This continues the work of Ichiba, Karatzas, Shkolnikov (2013) and Sarantsev (2015).
Consider a finite system of rank-based competing Brownian particles, where the drift and diffusion of each particle depend only on its current rank relative to other particles. We present a simple sufficient condition for absence of multiple collisions of a given order, continuing the earlier work by Bruggeman and Sarantsev (2015). Unlike in that paper, this new condition works even for infinite systems.
Consider a finite system of competing Brownian particles on the real line. Each particle moves as a Brownian motion, with drift and diffusion coefficients depending only on its current rank relative to the other particles. A triple collision occurs if three particles are at the same position at the same moment. A simultaneous collision occurs if at a certain moment, there are two distinct pairs of particles such that in each pair, both particles occupy the same position. These two pairs of particles can overlap, so a triple collision is a particular case of a simultaneous collision. We find a …
In this note we consider the time of the collision $τ$ for $n$ independent Brownian motions $X^1_t,...,X_t^n$ with drifts $a_1,...,a_n$, each starting from $x=(x_1,...,x_n)$, where $x_1<...<x_n$. We show the exact asymptotics of $P_x(τ>t) = C h(x)t^{-α}e^{-γt}(1 + o(1))$ as $t\to\infty$ and identify $C,h(x),α,γ$ in terms of the drifts.
We construct a two-dimensional diffusion process with rank-dependent local drift and dispersion coefficients, and with a full range of patterns of behavior upon collision that range from totally frictionless interaction, to elastic collision, to perfect reflection of one particle on the other. These interactions are governed by the left- and right-local times at the origin for the distance between the two particles. We realize this diffusion in terms of appropriate, apparently novel systems of stochastic differential equations involving local times, which we show are well posed. Questions of p…
In this article we establish the magnitude of fluctuations of the extreme particle in the model of binary branching Brownian motion with a single catalytic point at the origin.
Convergence of directed forests, spanning on random subsets of lattices or on point processes, towards the Brownian web has made the subject of an abundant literature, a large part of which relies on a criterion proposed by Fontes, Isopi, Newman and Ravishankar (2004). One of their convergence condition, called (B2), states that the probability of the event that there exists three distinct paths for a time interval of length $t(>0)$, all starting within a segment of length $\varepsilon$, is of small order of $\varepsilon$. This condition is often verified by applying an FKG type correlation in…
We consider critical branching Brownian motion with absorption, in which there is initially a single particle at $x > 0$, particles move according to independent one-dimensional Brownian motions with the critical drift of $-\sqrt{2}$, and particles are absorbed when they reach zero. Here we obtain asymptotic results concerning the behavior of the process before the extinction time, as the position $x$ of the initial particle tends to infinity. We estimate the number of particles in the system at a given time and the position of the right-most particle. We also obtain asymptotic results for the…
We consider the model of branching Brownian motion with a single catalytic point at the origin and binary branching. We establish some fine results for the asymptotic behaviour of the numbers of particles travelling at different speeds and give an explicit characterisation of the spatial distribution of particles travelling at the critical speed.
Our purpose in this paper is to determine the limiting distribution and the evolution rate of particles near the frontier of branching Brownian motions. Here the branching rate is given by a Kato class measure with compact support in Euclidean space. Our investigation focuses on the two dimensional case.
The paper identifies families of quasi-stationary initial conditions for infinite Brownian particle systems within a large class and provides a construction of the particle systems themselves started from such initial conditions. Examples of particle systems falling into our framework include Brownian versions of TASEP-like processes such as the diffusive scaling limit of the q-TASEP process. In this context the spacings between consecutive particles form infinite-dimensional versions of the softly reflected Brownian motions recently introduced in the finite-dimensional setting by O'Connell an…
Fisher-KPP equation is proved to be the scaling limit of a system of Brownian particles with local interaction. Particles proliferate and die depending on the local concentration of other particles. Opposite to discrete models, controlling concentration of particles is a major difficulty in Brownian particle interaction; local interactions instead of mean field or moderate ones makes it more difficult to implement the law of large numbers properties. The approach taken here to overcome these difficulties is largely inspired by A. Hammond and F. Rezakhanlou [10] implemented there in the mean fr…
We introduce the notion of a conditional distribution to a zero-probability event in a given direction of approximation, and prove that the conditional distribution of a family of independent Brownian particles to the event that their paths coalesce after the meeting coincides with the law of a modified massive Arratia flow, defined in [arXiv:1408.0628].
We investigate the behaviour of a finite chain of Brownian particles, interacting through a pairwise quadratic potential, with one end of the chain fixed and the other end pulled away at slow speed, in the limit of slow speed and small Brownian noise. We study the instant when the chain "breaks", that is, the distance between two neighboring particles becomes larger than a certain limit. There are three different regimes depending on the relation between the speed of pulling and the Brownian noise. We prove weak limit theorems for the break time and the break position for each regime.
It has been proved by Lalley and Sellke [13] that every particle born in a branching Brownian motion has a descendant reaching the rightmost position at some future time. The main goal of the present paper is to estimate asymptotically as s goes to infinity, the first time that every particle alive at the time s has a descendant reaching the rightmost position.
We study two models consisting of reflecting one-dimensional Brownian "particles" of positive radius. We show that the stationary empirical distributions for the particle systems do not converge to the harmonic function for the generator of the individual particle process, unlike in the case when the particles are infinitely small.
Consider a finite system of Brownian particles on the real line. Each particle has drift and diffusion coefficients depending on its current rank relative to other particles, as in Karatzas, Pal and Shkolnikov (2012). We prove some comparison results for these systems. As an example, we show that if we remove a few particles from the top, then the gaps between adjacent particles become stochastically larger, the local times of collision between adjacent particles become stochastically smaller, and the remaining particles shift upward, in the sense of stochastic ordering.
We study systems of Brownian particles on the real line, which interact by splitting the local times of collisions among themselves in an asymmetric manner. We prove the strong existence and uniqueness of such processes and identify them with the collections of ordered processes in a Brownian particle system, in which the drift coefficients, the diffusion coefficients, and the collision local times for the individual particles are assigned according to their ranks. These Brownian systems can be viewed as generalizations of those arising in first-order models for equity markets in the context o…
We consider a system $x(t)=(x_{1}(t),...,x_{N}(t))$ consisting of $N$ Brownian particles with synchronizing interaction between them occurring at random time moments $\{τ_{n}\}_{n=1}^{\infty}$. Under assumption that the free Brownian motions and the sequence $\{τ_{n}\}_{n=1}^{\infty}$ are independent we study asymptotic properties of the system when both the dimension~$N$ and the time~$t$ go to infinity. We find three time scales $t=t(N)$ of qualitatively different behavior of the system.
Particle approximations for certain nonlinear and nonlocal reaction-diffusion equations are studied using a system of Brownian motions with killing. The system is described by a collection of i.i.d. Brownian particles where each particle is killed independently at a rate determined by the empirical sub-probability measure of the states of the particles alive. A large deviation principle (LDP) for such sub-probability measure-valued processes is established. Along the way a convenient variational representation, which is of independent interest, for expectations of nonnegative functionals of Br…
Consider the infinite Atlas model: a semi-infinite collection of particles driven by independent standard Brownian motions with zero drifts, except for the bottom-ranked particle which receives unit drift. We derive a continuum one-parameter family of product-of-exponentials stationary gap distributions, with exponentially growing density at infinity. This result shows that there are infinitely many stationary gap distributions for the Atlas model, and hence resolves a conjecture of Pal and Pitman (2008) in the negative. This result is further generalized for infinite systems of competing Brow…
We study a simple model for the trajectory of a particle in a turbulent fluid, where a Brownian motion travels through a random Gaussian velocity field. We study the quenched law of the process and prove that in a weak environment setting, the fluctuations at the transition from weak to strong disorder are described by the KPZ equation. We conjecture the same is true without the assumption of a weak environment.
Motivated by the goal of understanding the evolution of populations undergoing selection, we consider branching Brownian motion in which particles independently move according to one-dimensional Brownian motion with drift, each particle may either split into two or die, and the difference between the birth and death rates is a linear function of the position of the particle. We show that, under certain assumptions, after a sufficiently long time, the empirical distribution of the positions of the particles is approximately Gaussian. This provides mathematically rigorous justification for resul…
We study the long-range asymptotic behavior for an out-of-equilibrium countable one-dimensional system of Brownian particles interacting through their rank-dependent drifts. Focusing on the semi-infinite case, where only the leftmost particle gets a constant drift to the right, we derive and solve the corresponding one- sided Stefan (free-boundary) equations. Via this solution we explicitly determine the limiting particle-density profile as well as the asymptotic trajectory of the leftmost particle. While doing so we further establish stochastic domination and convergence to equilibrium result…
In 2001, Knight constructed a stochastic process modeling the one dimensional interaction of two particles, one being Newtonian in the sense that it obeys Newton's laws of motion, and the other particle being Brownian. We construct a multi-particle analog, using Skorohod map estimates in proving a propagation of chaos and characterizing the hydrodynamic limit as the solution to a PDE with free boundary condition. Stochastic methods are used to show existence and uniqueness for the free boundary problem, and also present an algorithm of approximating the solution.
In this paper we study three self-similar, long-range dependence, Gaussian processes. The first one, with covariance \int_0^{s\wedge t} u^a [(t-u)^b+(s-u)^b]du, parameters a>-1, -1<b\leq 1, |b|\leq 1+a, corresponds to fractional Brownian motion for a=0, -1<b<1. The second one, with covariance (2-h)(s^h+t^h-[(s+t)^h +|s-t|^h]/2), parameter 0<h\leq 4, corresponds to sub-fractional Brownian motion for 0<h<2. The third one, with covariance -(s^2\log s + t^2\log t -[(s+t)^2 \log (s+t) +(s-t)^2 \log |s-t|]/2), is related to the second one. These processes come from occupation time fluctuations of ce…
We study the model of binary branching Brownian motion with spatially-inhomogeneous branching rate $βδ_0(\cdot)$, where $δ_0(\cdot)$ is the Dirac delta function and $β$ is some positive constant. We show that the distribution of the rightmost particle centred about $\fracβ{2}t$ converges to a mixture of Gumbel distributions according to a martingale limit. Our results form a natural extension to S. Lalley and T. Sellke [6] for the degenerate case of catalytic branching.
We investigate the motion of an inert (massive) particle being impinged from below by a particle performing (reflected) Brownian motion. The velocity of the inert particle increases in proportion to the local time of collisions and decreases according to a constant downward gravitational acceleration. We study fluctuations and strong laws of the motion of the particles. We further show that the joint distribution of the velocity of the inert particle and the gap between the two particles converges in total variation distance to a stationary distribution which has an explicit product form.
Consider a system of infinitely many Brownian particles on the real line. At any moment, these particles can be ranked from the bottom upward. Each particle moves as a Brownian motion with drift and diffusion coefficients depending on its current rank. The gaps between consecutive particles form the (infinite-dimensional) gap process. We find a stationary distribution for the gap process. We also show that if the initial value of the gap process is stochastically larger than this stationary distribution, this process converges back to this distribution as time goes to infinity. This continues …
Consider a system of Brownian particles on the real line where each pair of particles coalesces at a certain rate according to their intersection local time. Assume that there are infinitely many initial particles in the system. We give a necessary and sufficient condition for the number of particles to come down from infinity. We also identify the rate of this coming down from infinity for different initial configurations.
Two-sided infinite systems of Brownian particles with rank-dependent dynamics, indexed by all integers, exhibit different properties from their one-sided infinite counterparts, indexed by positive integers, and from finite systems. Consider the gap process, which is formed by spacings between adjacent particles. In stark contrast with finite and one-sided infinite systems, two-sided infinite systems can have one- or two-parameter family of stationary gap distributions, or the gap process weakly converging to zero as time goes to infinity.
Aiming to understand the distribution of fitness levels of individuals in a large population undergoing selection, we study the particle configurations of branching Brownian motion where each particle independently moves as Brownian motion with negative drift, particles can die or undergo dyadic fission, and the difference between the birth rate and the death rate is proportional to the particle's location. Under some assumptions, we obtain the limit in probability of the number of particles in any given interval and an explicit formula for the asymptotic empirical density of the fitness distr…
We consider an infinite system of Brownian motions which interact through a given Brownian motion being reflected from its left neighbor. Earlier we studied this system for deterministic periodic initial configurations. In this contribution we consider initial configurations distributed according to a Poisson point process with constant intensity, which makes the process space-time stationary. We prove convergence to the Airy process for stationary the case. As a byproduct we obtain a novel representation of the finite-dimensional distributions of this process. Our method differs from the one …
We consider Brownian motions with one-sided collisions, meaning that each particle is reflected at its right neighbour. For a finite number of particles a Schütz-type formula is derived for the transition probability. We investigate an infinite system with periodic initial configuration, that is, particles are located at the integer lattice at time zero. The joint distribution of the positions of a finite subset of particles is expressed as a Fredholm determinant with a kernel defining a signed determinantal point process. In the appropriate large time scaling limit, the fluctuations in the pa…
We consider a two-type reducible branching Brownian motion, defined as a particle system on the real line in which particles of two types move according to independent Brownian motion and create offspring at constant rate. Particles of type $1$ can give birth to particles of types $1$ and $2$, but particles of type $2$ only give birth to descendants of type $2$. Under some specific conditions, Biggins (2012) shows that this process exhibit an anomalous spreading behaviour: the rightmost particle at time $t$ is much further than the expected position for the rightmost particle in a branching Br…
We use geometric microlocal methods to compute an asymptotic expansion of mean first arrival time for Brownian particles on Riemannian manifolds. This approach provides a robust way to treat this problem, which has thus far been limited to very special geometries. This paper can be seen as the Riemannian 3-manifold version of the planar result of \cite{ammari} and thus enable us to see the full effect of the local extrinsic boundary geometry on the mean arrival time of the Brownian particles. Our approach also connects this question to some of the recent progress on boundary rigidity and integ…
We study the joint asymptotic behavior of spacings between particles at the edge of multilevel Dyson Brownian motions, when the number of levels tends to infinity. Despite the global interactions between particles in multilevel Dyson Brownian motions, we observe a decoupling phenomenon in the limit: the global interactions become negligible and only the local interactions remain. The resulting limiting objects are interacting particle systems which can be described as Brownian versions of certain totally asymmetric exclusion processes. This is the first appearance of a particle system with loc…
We study a model of mass-bearing coagulating planar Brownian particles. Coagulation is prone to occur when two particles become within a distance of order $ε$. We assume that the initial number of particles is of the order of $| \log ε|. Under suitable assumptions on the initial distribution of particles and the microscopic coagulation propensities, we show that the macroscopic particle densities satisfy a Smoluchowski-type equation.
Non-colliding Brownian particles in one dimension is studied. $N$ Brownian particles start from the origin at time 0 and then they do not collide with each other until finite time $T$. We derive the determinantal expressions for the multitime correlation functions using the self-dual quaternion matrices. We consider the scaling limit of the infinite particles $N \to \infty$ and the infinite time interval $T \to \infty$. Depending on the scaling, two limit theorems are proved for the multitime correlation functions, which may define temporally inhomogeneous infinite particle systems.
In the paper [7] we studied the temporally inhomogeneous system of non-colliding Brownian motions and proved that multi-time correlation functions are generally given by the quaternion determinants in the sense of Dyson and Mehta. In this report we give another proof of the equivalent statement using Fredholm determinant and Fredholm pfaffian, and claim that the present system is a typical example of pfaffian processes.
