English

The frog model with drift on R

Probability 2017-02-08 v3

Abstract

Consider a Poisson process on R\mathbb{R} with intensity ff where 0f(x)<0 \leq f(x)<\infty for x0{x}\geq 0 and f(x)=0{f(x)}=0 for x<0x<0. The "points" of the process represent sleeping frogs. In addition, there is one active frog initially located at the origin. At time t=0{t}=0 this frog begins performing Brownian motion with leftward drift λ\lambda (i.e. its motion is a random process of the form Btλt{B}_{t}-\lambda {t}). Any time an active frog arrives at a point where a sleeping frog is residing, the sleeping frog becomes active and begins performing Brownian motion with leftward drift λ\lambda, independently of the motion of all of the other active frogs. This paper establishes sharp conditions on the intensity function ff that determine whether the model is transient (meaning the probability that infinitely many frogs return to the origin is 0), or non-transient (meaning this probability is greater than 0). A discrete model with Poiss(f(n))\text{Poiss}(f(n)) sleeping frogs at positive integer points (and where activated frogs perform biased random walks on Z\mathbb{Z}) is also examined. In this case as well, we obtain a similar sharp condition on ff corresponding to transience of the model.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1605.08414,
  title  = {The frog model with drift on R},
  author = {Josh Rosenberg},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1605.08414},
  year   = {2017}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-22T14:10:36.025Z