English

Record statistics for random walks and L\'evy flights with resetting

Statistical Mechanics 2022-01-03 v2 Mathematical Physics math.MP Probability

Abstract

We compute exactly the mean number of records RN\langle R_N \rangle for a time-series of size NN whose entries represent the positions of a discrete time random walker on the line. At each time step, the walker jumps by a length η\eta drawn independently from a symmetric and continuous distribution f(η)f(\eta) with probability 1r1-r (with 0r<10\leq r < 1) and with the complementary probability rr it resets to its starting point x=0x=0. This is an exactly solvable example of a weakly correlated time-series that interpolates between a strongly correlated random walk series (for r=0r=0) and an uncorrelated time-series (for (1r)1(1-r) \ll 1). Remarkably, we found that for every fixed r[0,1[r \in [0,1[ and any NN, the mean number of records RN\langle R_N \rangle is completely universal, i.e., independent of the jump distribution f(η)f(\eta). In particular, for large NN, we show that RN\langle R_N \rangle grows very slowly with increasing NN as RN(1/r)lnN\langle R_N \rangle \approx (1/\sqrt{r})\, \ln N for 0<r<10<r <1. We also computed the exact universal crossover scaling functions for RN\langle R_N \rangle in the two limits r0r \to 0 and r1r \to 1. Our analytical predictions are in excellent agreement with numerical simulations.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2110.01539,
  title  = {Record statistics for random walks and L\'evy flights with resetting},
  author = {Satya N. Majumdar and Philippe Mounaix and Sanjib Sabhapandit and Gregory Schehr},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2110.01539},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

24 pages, 7 figures. Version submitted for publication

R2 v1 2026-06-24T06:36:41.753Z