English

Poissonization-based collision threshold derivation for random walks on lattices

Probability 2025-05-07 v1

Abstract

In this expository note, we give a short derivation of the expected number of collisions between two independent simple random walkers on integer lattices. Adapting a Poissonization technique introduced by Lange, we express the collision probability as the return probability of the continuous-time difference walk, given by a modified Bessel function. Analyzing its asymptotic decay yields a clean, self-contained proof that the expected number of collisions in Zd\mathbb{Z}^d is finite if and only if d3d\geq3. We also provide a general formula for the asymptotic number of collisions.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2505.02973,
  title  = {Poissonization-based collision threshold derivation for random walks on lattices},
  author = {Zachary Burton},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2505.02973},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

6 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-28T23:22:02.627Z