Perturbation Theory for Fractional Brownian Motion in Presence of Absorbing Boundaries

TL;DR

This paper develops a perturbation theory around the Markovian case to compute the probability density function for fractional Brownian motion with absorbing boundaries, revealing how non-Markovian effects modify boundary behavior.

Contribution

It introduces a systematic epsilon-expansion method to calculate the scaling function for fractional Brownian motion with absorbing boundaries, extending known results from the Markovian case.

Findings

Derived the scaling function R(y) to first order in epsilon

Confirmed the scaling relation phi = (1-H)/H

Validated results with numerical simulations for H=2/3

Abstract

Fractional Brownian motion is a Gaussian process x(t) with zero mean and two-time correlations <x(t)x(s)> ~ t^{2H} + s^{2H} - |t-s|^{2H}, where H, with 0<H<1 is called the Hurst exponent. For H = 1/2, x(t) is a Brownian motion, while for H unequal 1/2, x(t) is a non-Markovian process. Here we study x(t) in presence of an absorbing boundary at the origin and focus on the probability density P(x,t) for the process to arrive at x at time t, starting near the origin at time 0, given that it has never crossed the origin. It has a scaling form P(x,t) ~ R(x/t^H)/t^H. Our objective is to compute the scaling function R(y), which up to now was only known for the Markov case H=1/2. We develop a systematic perturbation theory around this limit, setting H = 1/2 + epsilon, to calculate the scaling function R(y) to first order in epsilon. We find that R(y) behaves as R(y) ~ y^phi as y -> 0 (near the absorbing boundary), while R(y) ~ y^gamma exp(-y^2/2) as y -> oo, with phi = 1 - 4 epsilon + O(epsilon^2) and gamma = 1 - 2 epsilon + O(epsilon^2). Our epsilon-expansion result confirms the scaling relation phi = (1-H)/H proposed in Ref. [28]. We verify our findings via numerical simulations for H = 2/3. The tools developed here are versatile, powerful, and adaptable to different situations.