The (standard) Brownian web is a collection of coalescing one- dimensional Brownian motions, starting from each point in space and time. It arises as the diffusive scaling limit of a collection of coalescing random walks. We show that it is possible to obtain a nontrivial limiting object if the random walks in addition branch with a small probability. We call the limiting object the Brownian net, and study some of its elementary properties.
We present a duality relation between two systems of coalescing random walks and an analogous duality relation between two systems of coalescing Brownian motions. Our results extends previous work in the literature and we apply it to the study of a system of coalescing Brownian motions with Poisson immigration.
This paper concerns the almost sure time dependent local extinction behavior for super-coalescing Brownian motion $X$ with $(1+β)$-stable branching and Lebesgue initial measure on $\bR$. We first give a representation of $X$ using excursions of a continuous state branching process and Arratia's coalescing Brownian flow. For any nonnegative, nondecreasing and right continuous function $g$, put τ:=\sup \{t\geq 0: X_t([-g(t),g(t)])>0 \}. We prove that $\bP\{τ=\infty\}=0$ or 1 according as the integral $\int_1^\infty g(t)t^{-1-1/β} dt$ is finite or infinite.
A superprocess with coalescing spatial motion is constructed in terms of one-dimensional excursions. Based on this construction, it is proved that the superprocess is purely atomic and arises as scaling limit of a special form of the superprocess with dependent spatial motion studied in Dawson {\it et al.} (2001) and Wang (1997, 1998).
We consider a superprocess with coalescing Brownian spatial motion. We first prove a dual relationship between two systems of coalescing Brownian motions. In consequence we can express the Laplace functionals for the superprocess in terms of coalescing Brownian motions, which allows us to obtain some explicit results. We also point out several connections between such a superprocess and the Arratia flow. A more general model is discussed at the end of this paper.
The coalescing Brownian flow on $\mathbb{R}$ is a process which was introduced by Arratia [Coalescing Brownian motions on the line (1979) Univ. Wisconsin, Madison] and Tóth and Werner [Probab. Theory Related Fields 111 (1998) 375-452], and which formally corresponds to starting coalescing Brownian motions from every space-time point. We provide a new state space and topology for this process and obtain an invariance principle for coalescing random walks. This result holds under a finite variance assumption and is thus optimal. In previous works by Fontes et al. [Ann. Probab. 32 (2004) 2857-288…
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.
We define a new state-space for the coalescing Brownian flow, also known as the Brownian web, on the circle. The elements of this space are families of order-preserving maps of the circle, depending continuously on two time parameters and having a certain weak flow property. The space is equipped with a complete separable metric. A larger state-space, allowing jumps in time, is also introduced, and equipped with a Skorokhod-type metric, also complete and separable. We prove that the coalescing Brownian flow is the weak limit in this larger space of a family of flows which evolve by jumps, each…
The Brownian Web (BW) is a family of coalescing Brownian motions starting from every point in space and time $\R\times\R$. It was first introduced by Arratia, and later analyzed in detail by Tóth and Werner. More recently, Fontes, Isopi, Newman and Ravishankar gave a characterization of the BW, and general convergence criteria allowing either crossing or noncrossing paths, which they verified for coalescing simple random walks. Later Ferrari, Fontes, and Wu verified these criteria for a two dimensional Poisson Tree. In both cases, the paths are noncrossing. In this thesis, we formulate new con…
The geometry of coalescing random walks, the Brownian web distance and KPZ universality
Budapest University of Technology and Economics（布达佩斯科技经济大学）；HUN-REN–BME Stochastics Research Group（匈牙利研究网络-布达佩斯科技大学随机过程研究组）；University of Toronto（多伦多大学）
We consider the backbone of the infinite cluster generated by supercritical oriented site percolation in dimension 1 +1. A directed random walk on this backbone can be seen as an "ancestral line" of an individual sampled in the stationary discrete-time contact process. Such ancestral lineages were investigated in [BCDG13] where a central limit theorem for a single walker was proved. Here, we consider infinitely many coalescing walkers on the same backbone starting at each space-time point. We show that, after diffusive rescaling, the collection of paths converges in distribution to the Brownia…
We generalize the coalescing Brownian flow, aka the Brownian web, considered as a weak flow to allow varying drift and diffusivity in the constituent diffusion processes and call these flows coalescing diffusive flows. We then identify the time-reversal of each coalescing diffusive flow and provide two distinct proofs of this identification. One of which is direct and the other proceeds by generalizing the concept of a localized disturbance flow to allow varying size and shape of disturbances, we show these new flows converge weakly under appropriate conditions to a coalescing diffusive flow a…
A class of interacting particle systems on $\mathbb{Z}$, involving instantaneously annihilating or coalescing nearest neighbour random walks, are shown to be Pfaffan point processes for all deterministic initial conditions. As diffusion limits, explicit Pfaffan kernels are derived for a variety of coalescing and annihilating Brownian systems. For Brownian motions on $\mathbb{R}$, depending on the initial conditions, the corresponding kernels are closely related to the bulk and edge scaling limits of the Pfaffan point process for real eigenvalues for the real Ginibre ensemble of random matrices…
Analogues of stepping--stone models are considered where the site--space is continuous, the migration process is a general Markov process, and the type--space is infinite. Such processes were defined in previous work of the second author by specifying a Feller transition semigroup in terms of expectations of suitable functionals for systems of coalescing Markov processes. An alternative representation is obtained here in terms of a limit of interacting particle systems. It is shown that, under a mild condition on the migration process, the continuum--sites stepping--stone process has continuou…
National University of Singapore（新加坡国立大学）；The Czech Academy of Sciences, Institute of Information Theory and Automation（捷克科学院信息与自动化研究所）；East China Normal University（华东师范大学）
A well-known result of Arratia shows that one can make rigorous the notion of starting an independent Brownian motion at every point of an arbitrary closed subset of the real line and then building a set-valued process by requiring particles to coalesce when they collide. Arratia noted that the value of this process will be almost surely a locally finite set at all positive times, and a finite set almost surely if the initial value is compact: the key to both of these facts is the observation that, because of the topology of the real line and the continuity of Brownian sample paths, at the tim…
We study a scaling limit associated to a model of planar aggregation. The model is obtained by composing certain independent random conformal maps. The evolution of harmonic measure on the boundary of the cluster is shown to converge to the coalescing Brownian flow.
We propose a metric space of coalescing pairs of paths on which we are able to prove (more or less) directly convergence of objects such as the persistence probability in the (one dimensional, nearest neighbor, symmetric) voter model or the diffusively rescaled weight distribution in a silo model (as well as the equivalent output distribution in a river basin model), interpreted in terms of (dual) diffusively rescaled coalescing random walks, to corresponding objects defined in terms of the Brownian web.
Coarsening on a one-dimensional lattice is described by the voter model or equivalently by coalescing (or annihilating) random walks representing the evolving boundaries between regions of constant color and by backward (in time) coalescing random walks corresponding to color genealogies. Asympotics for large time and space on the lattice are described via a continuum space-time voter model whose boundary motion is expressed by the {\it Brownian web} (BW) of coalescing forward Brownian motions. In this paper, we study how small noise in the voter model, corresponding to the nucleation of rando…
The Brownian Web (BW) is the random network formally consisting of the paths of coalescing one-dimensional Brownian motions starting from every space-time point in ${\mathbb R}\times{\mathbb R}$. We extend the earlier work of Arratia and of Tóth and Werner by providing characterization and convergence results for the BW distribution, including convergence of the system of all coalescing random walkssktop/brownian web/finale/arXiv submits/bweb.tex to the BW under diffusive space-time scaling. We also provide characterization and convergence results for the Double Brownian Web, which combines th…
The Brownian web (BW) is the random network formally consisting of the paths of coalescing one-dimensional Brownian motions starting from every space-time point in R\timesR. We extend the earlier work of Arratia and of Toth and Werner by providing a new characterization which is then used to obtain convergence results for the BW distribution, including convergence of the system of all coalescing random walks to the BW under diffusive space-time scaling.
The Brownian web (BW) is a collection of coalescing Brownian paths indexed by the plane. It appears in particular as continuous limit of various discrete models of directed forests of coalescing random walks and navigation schemes. Radial counterparts have been considered but global invariance principles are hard to establish. In this paper, we consider cylindrical forests which in some sense interpolate between the directed and radial forests: we keep the topology of the plane while still taking into account the angular component. We define in this way the cylindric Brownian web (CBW), which …
The Brownian web is a collection of one-dimensional coalescing Brownian motions starting from everywhere in space and time, and the Brownian net is a generalization that also allows branching. They appear in the diffusive scaling limits of many one-dimensional interacting particle systems with branching and coalescence. This article gives an introduction to the Brownian web and net, and how they arise in the scaling limits of various one-dimensional models, focusing mainly on coalescing random walks and random walks in i.i.d. space-time random environments. We will also briefly survey models a…
We introduce a system of one-dimensional coalescing nonsimple random walks with long range jumps allowing crossing paths and exibiting dependence before coalescence. We show that under diffusive scaling this system converges in distribution to the Brownian Web.
We consider large-scale point fields which naturally appear in the context of the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang (KPZ) phenomenon. Such point fields are geometrical objects formed by points of mass concentration, and by shocks separating the sources of these points. We introduce similarly defined point fields for processes of coalescing fractional Brownian motions (cfBm). The case of the Hurst index 2/3 is of particular interest for us since, in this case, the power law of the density decay is the same as that in the KPZ phenomenon. In this paper, we present strong numerical evidence that statistical pro…
Examples of interacting particle systems on $\mathbb{Z}$ as Pfaffian point processes: coalescing branching random walks and annihilating random walks with immigration
The Brownian web is a random object that occurs as the scaling limit of an infinite system of coalescing random walks. Perturbing this system of random walks by, independently at each point in space-time, resampling the random walk increments, leads to some natural dynamics. In this paper we consider the corresponding dynamics for the Brownian web. In particular, pairs of coupled Brownian webs are studied, where the second web is obtained from the first by perturbing according to these dynamics. A stochastic flow of kernels, which we call the erosion flow, is obtained via a filtering construct…
Arratia, and later Tóth and Werner, constructed random processes that formally correspond to coalescing one-dimensional Brownian motions starting from every space-time point. We extend their work by constructing and characterizing what we call the {\em Brownian Web} as a random variable taking values in an appropriate (metric) space whose points are (compact) sets of paths. This leads to general convergence criteria and, in particular, to convergence in distribution of coalescing random walks in the scaling limit to the Brownian Web.
Several authors have studied convergence in distribution to the Brownian web under diffusive scaling of Markovian random walks. In a paper by R. Roy, K. Saha and A. Sarkar, convergence to the Brownian web is proved for a system of coalescing random paths -- the Random Directed Forest -- which are not Markovian. Paths in the Random Directed Forest do not cross each other before coalescence. Here we study a generalization of the non-Markovian Random Directed Forest where paths can cross each other and prove convergence to the Brownian web. This provides an example of how the techniques to prove …
Motivated by its relevance for the study of perturbations of one-dimensional voter models, including stochastic Potts models at low temperature, we consider diffusively rescaled coalescing random walks with branching and killing. Our main result is convergence to a new continuum process, in which the random space-time paths of the Sun-Swart Brownian net are terminated at a Poisson cloud of killing points. We also prove existence of a percolation transition as the killing rate varies. Key issues for convergence are the relations of the discrete model killing points and their Poisson intensity m…
We introduce a new class of stochastic partial differential equations (SPDEs) with seed bank modeling the spread of a beneficial allele in a spatial population where individuals may switch between an active and a dormant state. Incorporating dormancy and the resulting seed bank leads to a two-type coupled system of equations with migration between both states. We first discuss existence and uniqueness of seed bank SPDEs and provide an equivalent delay representation that allows a clear interpretation of the age structure in the seed bank component. The delay representation will also be crucial…
We obtain the Brownian net of Sun and Swart (2008) as the scaling limit of the paths traced out by a system of continuous (one-dimensional) space and time branching and coalescing random walks. This demonstrates a certain universality of the net, which we have not seen explored elsewhere. The walks themselves arise in a natural way as the ancestral lineages relating individuals in a sample from a biological population evolving according to the spatial Lambda-Fleming-Viot process. Our scaling reveals the effect, in dimension one, of spatial structure on the spread of a selectively advantageous …
We study a system of coalescing random walks on the integer lattice $\mathbb{Z}^{d}$ in which the walk is oriented in the $d$-th direction and follows certain specified rules. We first study the geometry of the paths and show that, almost surely, the paths from a graph consisting of just one tree for dimentions $d=2,3$ and infinitely many disjoint trees for dimensions $d\geq 4$. Also, there is no bi-infinite path in the graph almost surely for $d\geq 2$. Subsequently, we prove that for $d=2$ the diffusive scaling of this system converges in distribution to the Brownian web.
The article contains description of the functionals from the family of coalescing Brownian particles. New type of the stochastic integral is introduced and used.
We introduce a system of coalescing random paths with radialbehavior in a subsetof the plane. We call it theDiscrete Radial Poissonian Web. We show that underdiffusive scaling this family converges in distribution toa mapping of a restrictionof the Brownian Web.
We consider a variant of the radial spanning tree introduced by Baccelli and Bordenave. Like the original model, our model is a tree rooted at the origin, built on the realization of a planar Poisson point process. Unlike it, the paths of our model have independent jumps. We show that locally our diffusively rescaled tree, seen as the collection of the paths connecting its sites to the root, converges in distribution to the Brownian Bridge Web, which is roughly speaking a collection of coalescing Brownian bridges starting from all the points of a planar strip perpendicular to the time axis, an…
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 give a short overview on our work on ancestral lineages in spatial population models with local regulation. We explain how an ancestral lineage can be interpreted as a random walk in a dynamic random environment. Defining regeneration times allows to prove central limit theorems for such walks. We also consider several ancestral lineages in the same population and show for one prototypical example that in one dimension the corresponding system of coalescing walks converges to the Brownian web.
The Brownian net, which has recently been introduced by Sun and Swart [SS08], and independently by Newman, Ravishankar and Schertzer [NRS08], generalizes the Brownian web by allowing branching. In this paper, we study the structure of the Brownian net in more detail. In particular, we give an almost sure classification of each point in $R^2$ according to the configuration of the Brownian net paths entering and leaving the point. Along the way, we establish various other structural properties of the Brownian net.
We consider the tributary structure of Howard's drainage model studied by Gangopadhyay et. al. Conditional on the event that the tributary survives up to time $n$, we show that, as a sequence of random metric spaces, scaled tributary converges in distribution to a continuum random tree with respect to Gromov Hausdorff topology. This verifies a prediction made by Aldous for a simpler model (where paths are independent till they coalesce) but for a different conditional set up. The limiting continuum tree is slightly different from what was surmised earlier. Our proof uses the fact that there ex…
Certain one-dimensional nearest-neighbor random walks in i.i.d. random space-time environments are known to have diffusive scaling limits. In the continuum limit, the random environment is represented by a `stochastic flow of kernels', which is a collection of random kernels that can be loosely interpreted as the transition probabilities of a Markov process in a random environment. The theory of stochastic flows of kernels was introduced by Le Jan and Raimond, who showed that each such flow is characterized by its n-point motions. We focus on a class of stochastic flows of kernels with Brownia…
In a coalescing random walk, a set of particles make independent random walks on a graph. Whenever one or more particles meet at a vertex, they unite to form a single particle, which then continues the random walk through the graph. Coalescing random walks can be used to achieve consensus in distributed networks, and is the basis of the self-stabilizing mutual exclusion algorithm of Israeli and Jalfon. Let G=(V,E), be an undirected, connected n vertex graph with m edges. Let C(n) be the expected time for all particles to coalesce, when initially one particle is located at each vertex of an n v…
The dynamical discrete web (DyDW),introduced in recent work of Howitt and Warren, is a system of coalescing simple symmetric one-dimensional random walks which evolve in an extra continuous dynamical time parameter τ. The evolution is by independent updating of the underlying Bernoulli variables indexed by discrete space-time that define the discrete web at any fixed τ. In this paper, we study the existence of exceptional (random) values of τwhere the paths of the web do not behave like usual random walks and the Hausdorff dimension of the set of exceptional such τ. Our results are motivated b…
To model the destruction of a resilient network, Cai, Holmgren, Devroye and Skerman introduced the $k$-cut model on a random tree, as an extension to the classic problem of cutting down random trees. Berzunza, Cai and Holmgren later proved that the total number of cuts in the $k$-cut model to isolate the root of a Galton--Watson tree with a finite-variance offspring law and conditioned to have $n$ nodes, when divided by $n^{1-1/2k}$, converges in distribution to some random variable defined on the Brownian CRT. We provide here a direct construction of the limit random variable, relying upon th…
Stochastic networks based on random point sets as nodes have attracted considerable interest in many applications, particularly in communication networks, including wireless sensor networks, peer-to-peer networks and so on. The study of such networks generally requires the nodes to be independently and uniformly distributed as a Poisson point process. In this work, we venture beyond this standard paradigm and investigate the stochastic geometry of networks obtained from \textit{directed spanning forests} (DSF) based on randomly perturbed lattices, which have desirable statistical properties as…
The dynamical discrete web (DDW), introduced in recent work of Howitt and Warren, is a system of coalescing simple symmetric one-dimensional random walks which evolve in an extra continuous dynamical parameter s. The evolution is by independent updating of the underlying Bernoulli variables indexed by discrete space-time that define the discrete web at any fixed s. In this paper, we study the existence of exceptional (random) values of s where the paths of the web do not behave like usual random walks and the Hausdorff dimension of the set of such exceptional s. Our results are motivated by th…
The Brownian map is a random sphere-homeomorphic metric measure space obtained by "gluing together" the continuum trees described by the $x$ and $y$ coordinates of the Brownian snake. We present an alternative "breadth-first" construction of the Brownian map, which produces a surface from a certain decorated branching process. It is closely related to the peeling process, the hull process, and the Brownian cactus. Using these ideas, we prove that the Brownian map is the only random sphere-homeomorphic metric measure space with certain properties: namely, scale invariance and the conditional in…
