English

Mean first-passage time of a random walker under Galilean transformation

Statistical Mechanics 2023-06-14 v1

Abstract

We consider a continuous-time random walk model with finite-mean waiting-times and we study the mean first-passage time (MFPT) as estimated by an observer in a reference frame S\mathcal{S}, that is co-moving with a target, and by an observer in a reference frame S\mathcal{S}', that is in uniform motion with respect to the target through a Galilean transformation. We found that the simple picture emerging in S\mathcal{S}, where the mean first-passage time depends on the whole jump distribution but only on the mean value of the waiting-times, does indeed not hold in S\mathcal{S}' where the estimation depends on the whole jump distribution and also on the whole distribution of the waiting-times. We derive the class of jump-size distributions such that the dependence of the MFPT on the mean waiting-time only is conserved also in S\mathcal{S}'. However, if the MFPT is finite, the dependence on the specific waiting-time distribution disappears in S\mathcal{S}' when the initial position is sufficiently far-away from the target. While the MFPT emerges to be Galilean invariant with both two-sided and one-sided jump distributions with finite moments, the MFPT is not a Galilean invariant for one-sided jump distribution with power-law tails (one-sided L\'evy distributions).

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2306.07828,
  title  = {Mean first-passage time of a random walker under Galilean transformation},
  author = {Marcus Dahlenburg and Gianni Pagnini},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2306.07828},
  year   = {2023}
}

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28 pages