We study a model of $ N $ mutually repellent Brownian motions under confinement to stay in some bounded region of space. Our model is defined in terms of a transformed path measure under a trap Hamiltonian, which prevents the motions from escaping to infinity, and a pair-interaction Hamiltonian, which imposes a repellency of the $N$ paths. In fact, this interaction is an $N$-dependent regularisation of the Brownian intersection local times, an object which is of independent interest in the theory of stochastic processes.
The time horizon (interpreted as the inverse temperature) is kept fixed. We analyse the model for diverging number of Brownian motions in terms of a large deviation principle. The resulting variational formula is the positive-temperature analogue of the well-known Gross-Pitaevskii formula, which approximates the ground state of a certain dilute large quantum system; the kinetic energy term of that formula is replaced by a probabilistic energy functional.
This study is a continuation of the analysis in \cite{ABK04} where we considered the limit of diverging time (i.e., the zero-temperature limit) with fixed number of Brownian motions, followed by the limit for diverging number of motions.
\bibitem[ABK04]{ABK04} {\sc S.~Adams, J.-B.~Bru} and {\sc W.~König}, \newblock Large deviations for trapped interacting Brownian particles and paths, \newblock {\it Ann. Probab.}, to appear (2004).
Stochastic variational inequalities provide a unified treatment for stochastic differential equations living in a closed domain with normal reflection and (or) singular repellent drift. When the domain is a polyhedron, we prove that the reflected-repelled Brownian motion does not hit the non-smooth part of the boundary. A sufficient condition for non-hitting a face of the polyhedron is derived from the one-dimensional case. A complete answer to the question of attainability of the walls of the Weyl chamber may be given for a radial Dunkl process.
We consider two models of random diffusion in random environment in two dimensions. The first example is the self-repelling Brownian polymer, this describes a diffusion pushed by the negative gradient of its own occupation time measure (local time). The second example is a diffusion in a fixed random environment given by the curl of massless Gaussian free field. In both cases we show that the process is superdiffusive: the variance grows faster than linearly with time. We give lower and upper bounds of the order of t log log t, respectively, t log t. We also present computations for an anisotr…
The problems considered in the present paper have their roots in two different cultures. The 'true' (or myopic) self-avoiding walk model (TSAW) was introduced in the physics literature by Amit, Parisi and Peliti. This is a nearest neighbor non-Markovian random walk in Z^d which prefers to jump to those neighbors which were less visited in the past. The self-repelling Brownian polymer model (SRBP), initiated in the probabilistic literature by Durrett and Rogers (independently of the physics community), is the continuous space-time counterpart: a diffusion in R^d pushed by the negative gradient …
Brownian motion in the plane in the presence of a "trap" at which motion is stopped is studied. If the trap $T$ is a connected compact set, it is shown that the probability for planar Brownian motion to hit this set before a given time $t$ is well approximated even at short times by the probability that Brownian motion hits a disk of radius $r_T$ equal to the conformal radius of the trap $T$.
We consider the annealed asymptotics for the survival probability of Brownian motion among randomly distributed traps. The configuration of the traps is given by independent displacements of the lattice points. We determine the long time asymptotics of the logarithm of the survival probability up to a multiplicative constant. As applications, we show the Lifshitz tail effect of the density of states of the associated random Schrödinger operator and derive a quantitative estimate for the strength of intermittency in the Parabolic Anderson problem.
We study trajectories of d-dimensional Brownian Motion in Poissonian potential up to the hitting time of a distant hyper-plane. Our Poissonian potential V can be associated to a field of traps whose centers location is given by a Poisson Point process and whose radii are IID distributed with a common distribution that has unbounded support; it has the particularity of having long-range correlation. We focus on the case where the law of the trap radii has power-law decay and prove that superdiffusivity hold under certain condition, and get a lower bound on the volume exponent. Results differ qu…
The survival problem for a diffusing particle moving among random traps is considered. We introduce a simple argument to derive the quenched asymptotics of the survival probability from the Lifshitz tail effect for the associated operator. In particular, the upper bound is proved in fairly general settings and is shown to be sharp in the case of the Brownian motion in the Poissonian obstacles. As an application, we derive the quenched asymptotics for the Brownian motion in traps distributed according to a random perturbation of the lattice.
We review probabilistic approaches to the Gross-Pitaevskii theory describing interacting dilute systems of particles. The main achievement are large deviations principles for the mean occupation measure of a large system of interacting Brownian motions in a trapping potential. The corresponding rate functions are given as variational problems whose solution provide effective descriptions of the infinite system.
Our model consists of a Brownian particle $X$ moving in $\mathbb{R}$, where a Poissonian field of moving traps is present. Each trap is a ball with constant radius, centered at a trap point, and each trap point moves under a Brownian motion independently of others and of the motion of $X$. Here, we investigate the 'speed' of $X$ on the time interval $[0,t]$ and on 'microscopic' time scales given that $X$ avoids the trap field up to time $t$. Firstly, following the earlier work of Athreya et al. [Math. Phys. Anal. Geom. 20:1 (2017)], we obtain bounds on the maximal displacement of $X$ from the …
We study a branching Brownian motion $Z$ with a generic branching law, evolving in $\mathbb{R}^d$, where a field of Poissonian traps is present. Each trap is a ball with constant radius. We focus on two cases of Poissonian fields: a uniform field and a radially decaying field. Using classical results on the convergence of the speed of branching Brownian motion, we establish precise results on the population size of $Z$, given that it avoids the trap field, while staying alive up to time $t$. The results are stated so that each gives an 'optimal survival strategy' for $Z$. As corollaries of the…
We introduce two probabilistic models for $N$ interacting Brownian motions moving in a trap in $\mathbb {R}^d$ under mutually repellent forces. The two models are defined in terms of transformed path measures on finite time intervals under a trap Hamiltonian and two respective pair-interaction Hamiltonians. The first pair interaction exhibits a particle repellency, while the second one imposes a path repellency. We analyze both models in the limit of diverging time with fixed number $N$ of Brownian motions. In particular, we prove large deviations principles for the normalized occupation measu…
We study the problem of maximizing the expected lifetime of drift diffusion in a bounded domain. More formally, we consider the PDE \[ - Δu + b(x) \cdot \nabla u = 1 \qquad \mbox{in}~Ω\] subject to Dirichlet boundary conditions for $\|b\|_{L^{\infty}}$ fixed. We show that, in any given $C^2-$domain $Ω$, the vector field maximizing the expected lifetime is (nonlinearly) coupled to the solution and satisfies $b = -\|b\|_{L^{\infty}} \nabla u/ |\nabla u|$ which reduces the problem to the study of the nonlinear PDE \[ -Δu - b \cdot \left| \nabla u \right| = 1,\] where $b = \|b\|_{L^{\infty}}$ is a…
We prove a non-central limit theorem for the symmetric weighted odd-power variations of the fractional Brownian motion with Hurst parameter H< 1/2. As applications, we study the asymptotic behavior of the trapezoidal weighted odd-power variations of the fractional Brownian motion and the fractional Brownian motion in Brownian time Z_t:= X_{Y_t}, t >= 0, where X is a fractional Brownian motion and Y is an independent Brownian motion.
We study the long-time asymptotics of the probability P_t that the Riemann-Liouville fractional Brownian motion with Hurst index H does not escape from a fixed interval [-L,L] up to time t. We show that for any H \in ]0,1], for both subdiffusion and superdiffusion regimes, this probability obeys \ln(P_t) \sim - t^{2 H}/L^2, i.e. may decay slower than exponential (subdiffusion) or faster than exponential (superdiffusion). This implies that survival probability S_t of particles undergoing fractional Brownian motion in a one-dimensional system with randomly placed traps follows \ln(S_t) \sim - n^…
We study a branching Brownian motion $Z$ in $\mathbb{R}^d$, among obstacles scattered according to a Poisson random measure with a radially decaying intensity. Obstacles are balls with constant radius and each one works as a trap for the whole motion when hit by a particle. Considering a general offspring distribution, we derive the decay rate of the annealed probability that none of the particles of $Z$ hits a trap, asymptotically in time $t$. This proves to be a rich problem motivating the proof of a more general result about the speed of branching Brownian motion conditioned on non-extincti…
We investigate signatures of convergence for a sequence of diffusion processes on a line, in conservative force fields stemming from superharmonic potentials $U(x)\sim x^m$, $m=2n \geq 2$. This is paralleled by a transformation of each $m$-th diffusion generator $L = DΔ+ b(x)\nabla $, and likewise the related Fokker-Planck operator $L^*= DΔ- \nabla [b(x)\, \cdot]$, into the affiliated Schrödinger one $\hat{H}= - DΔ+ {\cal{V}}(x)$. Upon a proper adjustment of operator domains, the dynamics is set by semigroups $\exp(tL)$, $\exp(tL_*)$ and $\exp(-t\hat{H})$, with $t \geq 0$. The Feynman-Kac inte…
We consider an n-dimensional Brownian Motion trapped inside a bounded convex set by normally-reflecting boundaries. It is well-known that this process is uniformly ergodic. However, the rates of this ergodicity are not well-understood, especially in the regime of very high-dimensional sets. Here we present new bounds on these rates for convex sets with a given diameter. Our bounds do not depend upon the smoothness of the boundary nor the value of the ambient dimension, n.
We consider the tail probabilities for Brownian exit time from a class of perturbed multi-strips in Euclidean plane. Under some assumptions we prove that the long stays in a perturbed multi-strip are more likely than those in a strip of the same width. This effect is related to the existence of the trapped modes in waveguides.
A conditioned stochastic process can display a very different behavior from the unconditioned process. In particular, a conditioned process can exhibit non-Gaussian fluctuations even if the unconditioned process is Gaussian. In this work, we revisit the Ferrari-Spohn model of a Brownian bridge conditioned to avoid a moving wall, which pushes the system into a large-deviation regime. We extend this model to an arbitrary number $N$ of non-crossing Brownian bridges. We obtain the joint distribution of the distances of the Brownian particles from the wall at an intermediate time in the form of the…
This paper continues a study on trajectories of Brownian Motion in a field of soft trap whose radius distribution is unbounded. We show here for both point-to-point and point-to-plane model the volume exponent (the exponent associated to transversal fluctuation of the trajectories) is strictly less than one and give an explicit upper bound that depends on the parameters of the problem. In some specific cases, this upper bound matches the lower bound proved in the first part of this work and we get the exact value of the volume exponent.
In this paper we study the asymptotic behavior of Brownian motion in both comb-shaped planar domains, and comb-shaped graphs. We show convergence to a limiting process when both the spacing between the teeth \emph{and} the width of the teeth vanish at the same rate. The limiting process exhibits an anomalous diffusive behavior and can be described as a Brownian motion time-changed by the local time of an independent sticky Brownian motion. In the two dimensional setting the main technical step is an oscillation estimate for a Neumann problem, which we prove here using a probabilistic argument.…
Diffusion in heterogeneous media partitioned by semi-permeable interfaces has a wide range of applications in the physical and life sciences, including gas permeation in soils, diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (dMRI), drug delivery, thermal conduction in composite media, synaptic receptor trafficking, and intercellular gap junctions. At the single particle level, diffusion across a semi-permeable interface can be formulated in terms of so-called snapping out Brownian motion (SNOBM). The latter sews together successive rounds of reflected BM, each of which is restricted to one side of the i…
