The phenomenon of macroscopic homogenization is illustrated with a simple example of diffusion. We examine the conditions under which a $d$--dimensional simple random walk in a symmetric random media converges to a Brownian motion. For $d=1$, both the macroscopic homogeneity condition and the diffusion coefficient can be read from an explicit expression for the Green's function. Except for this case, the two available formulas for the effective diffusion matrix $κ$ do not explicit show how macroscopic homogenization takes place. Using an electrostatic analogy due to Anshelevich, Khanin and Sinai \cite{AKS}, we discuss upper and lower bounds on the diffusion coefficient $κ$ for $d>1$.
We have shown recently how to calculate the large deviation function of the position $X_{\max}(t) $ of the right most particle of a branching Brownian motion at time $t$. This large deviation function exhibits a phase transition at a certain negative velocity. Here we extend this result to more general branching random walks and show that the probability distribution of $X_{\max}(t)$ has, asymptotically in time, a prefactor characterized by non trivial power law.
This paper calculates several useful statistical properties of the convex minorant process generated by random walk processes. In particular, we calculate the statistics of the longest segment in the convex minorant of a random walk of a given length. In addition, we calculate the probability that the convex minorant of a random walk of length N is composed of exactly m segments; we give an exact formula for the expected number of segments in the convex minorant. We obsevere that some of this analysis can be meaningful for the case of Brownian motion on finite intervals; we can calculate exact…
We prove a scaling limit result for random walk on certain random planar maps with its natural time parametrization. In particular, we show that for $γ\in (0,2)$, the random walk on the mated-CRT map with parameter $γ$ converges to $γ$-Liouville Brownian motion, the natural quantum time parametrization of Brownian motion on a $γ$-Liouville quantum gravity (LQG) surface. Our result applies if the mated-CRT map is embedded into the plane via the embedding which comes from SLE / LQG theory or via the Tutte embedding (a.k.a. the harmonic or barycentric embedding). In both cases, the convergence is…
Inspired by the collective phenomenon of territorial emergence, whereby animals move and interact through the scent marks they deposit, we study the dynamics of a 1D Brownian walker in a random environment consisting of confining boundaries that are themselves diffusing anomalously. We show how to reduce, in certain parameter regimes, the non-Markovian, many-body problem of territoriality to the analytically tractable one-body problem studied here. The mean square displacement (MSD) of the 1D Brownian walker within subdiffusing boundaries is calculated exactly and generalizes well known result…
A celebrated problem in numerical analysis is to consider Brownian motion originating at the centre of a $10 \times 1$ rectangle, and to evaluate the ratio of probabilities of a Brownian path hitting the short ends of the rectangle before hitting one of the long sides. For Brownian motion this probability can be calculated exactly \cite{BLWW04}. Here we consider instead the more difficult problem of a self-avoiding walk in the scaling limit, and pose the same question. Assuming that the scaling limit of SAW is conformally invariant, we evaluate, asymptotically, the same ratio of probabilities.…
We study the extreme statistics of N non-intersecting Brownian motions (vicious walkers) over a unit time interval in one dimension. Using path-integral techniques we compute exactly the joint distribution of the maximum M and of the time τ_M at which this maximum is reached. We focus in particular on non-intersecting Brownian bridges ("watermelons without wall") and non-intersecting Brownian excursions ("watermelons with a wall"). We discuss in detail the relationships between such vicious walkers models in watermelons configurations and stochastic growth models in curved geometry on the one …
We introduce a natural "massive" version of the Brownian loop soup of Lawler and Werner which displays conformal covariance and exponential decay. We show that this massive Brownian loop soup arises as the near-critical scaling limit of a random walk loop soup with killing and is related to the massive SLE(2) identified by Makarov and Smirnov as the near-critical scaling limit of a loop-erased random walk with killing. We conjecture that the massive Brownian loop soup describes the zero level lines of the massive Gaussian free field, and discuss possible relations to other models, such as Isin…
Using quantum parallelism on random walks as original seed, we introduce new quantum stochastic processes, the open quantum Brownian motions. They describe the behaviors of quantum walkers -- with internal degrees of freedom which serve as random gyroscopes -- interacting with series of probes. These processes may also be viewed as the scaling limit of open quantum random walks and we develop this approach along three different lines: quantum trajectory, quantum dynamical map, and quantum stochastic differential equation. We also present a study of the simplest case, with a two level system as…
We study a system of N non-intersecting Brownian motions on a line segment [0,L] with periodic, absorbing and reflecting boundary conditions. We show that the normalized reunion probabilities of these Brownian motions in the three models can be mapped to the partition function of two-dimensional continuum Yang-Mills theory on a sphere respectively with gauge groups U(N), Sp(2N) and SO(2N). Consequently, we show that in each of these Brownian motion models, as one varies the system size L, a third order phase transition occurs at a critical value L=L_c(N)\sim \sqrt{N} in the large N limit. Clos…
We consider a one-dimensional Brownian motion of fixed duration $T$. Using a path-integral technique, we compute exactly the probability distribution of the difference $τ=t_{\min}-t_{\max}$ between the time $t_{\min}$ of the global minimum and the time $t_{\max}$ of the global maximum. We extend this result to a Brownian bridge, i.e. a periodic Brownian motion of period $T$. In both cases, we compute analytically the first few moments of $τ$, as well as the covariance of $t_{\max}$ and $t_{\min}$, showing that these times are anti-correlated. We demonstrate that the distribution of $τ$ for Bro…
We consider a long-range version of self-avoiding walk in dimension $d > 2(α\wedge 2)$, where $d$ denotes dimension and $α$ the power-law decay exponent of the coupling function. Under appropriate scaling we prove convergence to Brownian motion for $α\ge 2$, and to $α$-stable Lévy motion for $α< 2$. This complements results by Slade (1988), who proves convergence to Brownian motion for nearest-neighbor self-avoiding walk in high dimension.
As an image of the many-to-one map of loop-erasing operation $\LE$ of random walks, a self-avoiding walk (SAW) is obtained. The loop-erased random walk (LERW) model is the statistical ensemble of SAWs such that the weight of each SAW $ζ$ is given by the total weight of all random walks $π$ which are inverse images of $ζ$, $\{π: \LE(π)=ζ\}$. We regard the Brownian paths as the continuum limits of random walks and consider the statistical ensemble of loop-erased Brownian paths (LEBPs) as the continuum limits of the LERW model. Following the theory of Fomin on nonintersecting LERWs, we introduce …
Recent works have shown that an instance of a Brownian surface (such as the Brownian map or Brownian disk) a.s. has a canonical conformal structure under which it is equivalent to a $\sqrt{8/3}$-Liouville quantum gravity (LQG) surface. In particular, Brownian motion on a Brownian surface is well-defined. The construction in these works is indirect, however, and leaves open a basic question: is Brownian motion on a Brownian surface the limit of simple random walk on increasingly fine discretizations of that surface, the way Brownian motion on $\mathbb R^2$ is the $ε\to 0$ limit of simple random…
We prove that the scaling limit of the weakly self-avoiding walk on a $d$-dimensional discrete torus is Brownian motion on the continuum torus if the length of the rescaled walk is $o(V^{1/2})$ where $V$ is the volume (number of points) of the torus and if $d>4$. We also prove that the diffusion constant of the resulting torus Brownian motion is the same as the diffusion constant of the scaling limit of the usual weakly self-avoiding walk on $\mathbb{Z}^d$. This provides further manifestation of the fact that the weakly self-avoiding walk model on the torus does not feel that it is on the toru…
Brownian motion is a well-known model for normal diffusion, but not all physical phenomena behave according to a Brownian motion. Many phenomena exhibit irregular diffusive behavior, called anomalous diffusion. Examples of anomalous diffusion have been observed in physics, hydrology, biology, and finance, among many other fields. Continuous-time random walks (CTRWs), introduced by Montroll and Weiss, serve as models for anomalous diffusion. CTRWs generalize the usual random walk model by allowing random waiting times between successive random jumps. Under certain conditions on the jumps and wa…
We derive the exact value of intersection exponents between planar Brownian motions or random walks, confirming predictions from theoretical physics by Duplantier and Kwon. Let B and B' be independent Brownian motions (or simple random walks) in the plane, started from distinct points. We prove that the probability that the paths B[0,t] and B'[0,t] do not intersect decays like t^{-5/8}. More precisely, there is a constant c>0 such that if |B(0) - B'(0)| =1, for all t \ge 1, c^{-1} t^{-5/8} \le ¶[ B[0,t] \cap B'[0,t] = \emptyset ] \le c t^{-5/8}. One consequence is that the set of cut-points of…
