Universal criterion for selective outcomes under stochastic resetting
Abstract
Resetting plays a pivotal role in optimizing the completion time of complex first passage processes with single or multiple outcomes/exit possibilities. While it is well established that the coefficient of variation -- a statistical dispersion defined as a ratio of the fluctuations over the mean of the first passage time -- must be larger than unity for resetting to be beneficial for any outcome averaged over all the possibilities, the same can not be said while conditioned on a particular outcome. The purpose of this letter is to derive a universal condition which reveals that two statistical metric -- the mean and coefficient of variation of the conditional times -- come together to determine when resetting can expedite the completion of a selective outcome, and furthermore can govern the biasing between preferential and non-preferential outcomes. The universality of this result is demonstrated for a one dimensional diffusion process subjected to resetting with two absorbing boundaries.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2502.09127,
title = {Universal criterion for selective outcomes under stochastic resetting},
author = {Suvam Pal and Leonardo Dagdug and Dibakar Ghosh and Denis Boyer and Arnab Pal},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2502.09127},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
13 pages, 4 figures