Related papers: The combinatorics of the colliding bullets problem

We consider the motion of a finite though large number of particles in the whole space R n. Particles move freely until they experience pairwise collisions. We use our recent theory of divergence-controlled positive symmetric tensors in…

A discrete version of the nonlinear collision-induced breakage equation is studied. Existence of solutions is investigated for a broad class of unbounded collision kernels and daughter distribution functions, the collision kernel $a_{i,j}$…

We consider proton-nucleus collisions at high energy in the Color Glass Condensate framework, and extract from the gluon production cross-section the probabilities of having a definite number of multiple scatterings in the nucleus. Various…

We study the fundamental problem of two gas species in two dimensional velocity space whose molecules collide as hard circles in the presence of a flat boundary and with dependence on only one space dimension. The case of three-dimensional…

The l1-regularization is very popular in high dimensional statistics -- it changes a combinatorial problem of choosing which subset of the parameter are zero, into a simple continuous optimization. Using a continuous prior concentrated near…

How many fair coin tosses to choose 1 of $n$ options with uniform probability? Although a probability problem, the solution is essentially number-theoretic, with special roles for Mersenne numbers, Fermat numbers, and the haupt exponent. We…

We present a finite-order system of recurrence relations for a permanent of circulant matrices containing a band of k any-value diagonals on top of a uniform matrix (for k = 1, 2, and 3) as well as the method for deriving such recurrence…

We propose a general impulsive model for scattering of molecules from a flat solid surface. It is assumed within the framework of this model that an encounter of an atom (or ion) with the surface is a series of elastic (in the direction…

A possible alternative way of producing muons (or other unstable particles) for colliders is proposed. It consists in colliding beams in a "chasing beam" configuration, i.e. collisions of two beams having the same direction but with…

Several differential equations usually appearing in mathematical physics are solved through a power series expansion, which reduces in solving difference equations. In this paper a probability problem is presented whose solution follows a…

Consider n unit intervals, say [1,2], [3,4], ..., [2n-1,2n]. Identify their endpoints in pairs at random, with all (2n-1)!! = (2n-1) (2n-3) ... 3 1 pairings being equally likely. The result is a collection of cycles of various lengths, and…

We consider the airplane refueling problem, where we have a fleet of airplanes that can refuel each other. Each airplane is characterized by specific fuel tank volume and fuel consumption rate, and the goal is to find a drop out order of…

In this paper, we consider multistopping problems for finite discrete time sequences $X_1,...,X_n$. $m$-stops are allowed and the aim is to maximize the expected value of the best of these $m$ stops. The random variables are neither assumed…

In the paper we study a measure version of the evolutionary nonlinear Boltzmann-type equation in which we admit a random number of collisions of particles. We consider first a stationary model and use two methods to find its fixed points:…

We generalize the well-known broken stick problem in several ways, including a discrete "brick" analogue and a sequential "pick-up sticks/bricks" version. The limit behavior of the broken brick problem gives a combinatorial proof of the…

In this paper, we use techniques of enumerative combinatorics to study the following problem: we count the number of ways to split $n$ balls into nonempty, ordered bins so that the most crowded bin has exactly $k$ balls. We find closed…

We examine the total number of collisions $C_n$ in the $\Lambda$-coalescent process which starts with $n$ particles. A linear growth and a stable limit law for $C_n$ are shown under the assumption of a power-like behaviour of the measure…

We survey known solutions to the infinite extendibility problem for (necessarily exchangeable) probability laws on $\mathbb{R}^d$, which is: Can a given random vector $\vec{X} = (X_1,\ldots,X_d)$ be represented in distribution as the first…

Consider a fully-connected synchronous distributed system consisting of $n$ nodes, where up to $f$ nodes may be faulty and every node starts in an arbitrary initial state. In the synchronous $C$-counting problem, all nodes need to…

For a broad class of random walks with anisotropic scattering kernel and absorption, we derive explicit formulas that allow expressing the moments of the collision number $n_V$ performed in a volume $V$ as a function of the particle…