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Phys. Rev. E 62, 3250–3256 (2000)

Occupancy of a single site by many random walkers

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M. Boguñá1, A. M. Berezhkovskii2,*, and G. H. Weiss1
1Center for Information Technology, Bethesda, Maryland 20892
2National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland 20892

Received 12 April 2000; published in the issue dated September 2000

We consider an infinite number of noninteracting lattice random walkers with the goal of determining statistical properties of the time, out of a total time T, that a single site has been occupied by n random walkers. Initially the random walkers are assumed uniformly distributed on the lattice except for the target site at the origin, which is unoccupied. The random-walk model is taken to be a continuous-time random walk and the pausing-time density at the target site is allowed to differ from the pausing-time density at other sites. We calculate the dependence of the mean time of occupancy by n random walkers as a function of n and the observation time T. We also find the variance for the cumulative time during which the site is unoccupied. The large-T behavior of the variance differs according as the random walk is transient or recurrent. It is shown that the variance is proportional to T at large T in three or more dimensions, it is proportional to T3/2 in one dimension and to TlnT in two dimensions.

© 2000 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevE.62.3250
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevE.62.3250
PACS:
05.40.Fb, 02.50.-r, 05.40.-a

*Permanent address: Karpov Institute of Physical Chemistry, 10 Vorontsovo Pole Street, 103064 Moscow K-64, Russia.