Statistical properties of sites visited by independent random walks

TL;DR

This paper investigates the probabilistic ordering properties of two independent random walks on hyper-cubic lattices, analyzing how their visited sites compare over time through numerical simulations and analytical methods.

Contribution

It introduces new analytical results on the growth of ties and ordering probabilities between two independent random walks in various dimensions.

Findings

Average number of ties grows as 0.970508*ln t in 1D

Number of ties grows as (ln t)^2 in 2D

Leading asymptotic behaviors of ordering probabilities are characterized

Abstract

The set of visited sites and the number of visited sites are two basic properties of the random walk trajectory. We consider two independent random walks on a hyper-cubic lattice and study ordering probabilities associated with these characteristics. The first is the probability that during the time interval (0,t), the number of sites visited by a walker never exceeds that of another walker. The second is the probability that the sites visited by a walker remain a subset of the sites visited by another walker. Using numerical simulations, we investigate the leading asymptotic behaviors of the ordering probabilities in spatial dimensions d=1,2,3,4. We also study the evolution of the number of ties between the number of visited sites. We show analytically that the average number of ties increases as $a_1\ln t$ with $a_1=0.970508$ in one dimension and as $(\ln t)^2$ in two dimensions.