Universal to Non-Universal Transition of the statistics of Rare Events During the Spread of Random Walks

TL;DR

This paper investigates the transition from universal to non-universal behavior in the statistics of rare events during particle diffusion modeled by continuous time random walks, highlighting a critical shift in the governing principles.

Contribution

It identifies a critical threshold where the exponential universality of rare events breaks down, replacing the large deviation principle with the big jump principle.

Findings

Universal exponential decay of rare events ceases beyond a threshold

A single large event dominates the statistics after the transition

The spatial decay remains unaffected by temporal properties post-transition

Abstract

Particle hopping is a common feature in heterogeneous media. We explore such motion by using the widely applicable formalism of the continuous time random walk and focus on the statistics of rare events. Numerous experiments have shown that the decay of the positional probability density function P (X, t), describing the statistics of rare events, exhibits universal exponential decay. We show that such universality ceases to exist once the threshold of exponential distribution of particle hops is crossed. While the mean hop is not diverging and can attain a finite value; the transition itself is critical. The exponential universality of rare events arises due to the contribution of all the different states occupied during the process. Once the reported threshold is crossed, a single large event determines the statistics. In this realm, the big jump principle replaces the large deviation principle, and the spatial part of the decay is unaffected by the temporal properties of rare events.