Two problems on interacting

random walk
Arnab Datta

Interacting random walks have very interesting applications in absorption,

catalysis, calving of glaciers etc. In this project, I worked on two problems of
interacting random walk :

the lions-lamb problem

crack propagation on a two-dimensional sheet

The lions-lamb problem

Chemical reactions can be modelled by random walkers(chemical
molecules) that drop out of the system or merge on meeting. An interesting
toy problem related to this is the lions-lamb problem, where the lions chase
and kill the lamb on meeting.
There has been a significant amount of work on this problem and by
simulations we find that the survival probability decreases as some power
of t, the exponent depending on N, but independent of the initial
configuration of the system.
In this problem, I calculated that the survival probability of the lamb for two
lions goes as 1/t. I also found out an upper bound for survival probability
when the lamb is chased by N lions.

Problem statement:
Consider the lamb is at the origin of a one-dimensional lattice at time t =
0.There are N lions on the positive x-axis. All lions and the lamb are
performing discrete time random walk with the constraint that no two lions
can be at the same place at any time. If any lion and the lamb come at same
site or cross each other, the lamb is eaten. The problem is to find the
survival probability of the lamb at n-th step.

Survival probability for two lions:

Since the lions cannot sit on top of each other(but they can hop over each
other),we consider the rule that if at any step, the position of the lions are (x,x
+2),instead of (x +1,x +1), it becomes (x +1,x +2) with probability 1/4 at the next
step.
For one lion chasing the lamb, it is well-known that the survival probability
P(t) goes as 1/t. So, if the initial distance between the lions is odd, we are
assured that they will never be at the same point. So, the problem is same as two
independent lions chasing the lamb. So, P(t) (1/t)2 = 1/t.
Even if the initial distance is even it can be shown that a/t < P(t) < b/t for some a,
b.

Redner and Kripvasky's result for N lions:

In the paper, Capture of the Lamb: Diffusing Predators Seeking a Diffusing
Prey , the authors dealt with the continuous version of this problem, where
the lamb and lions diffuse with diffusion coefficient Dl and DL respectively.
They showed that for large N, the survival probability ~ t - , where is
proportional to lnN for 1/N < Dl /DL < lnN .

Crack propagation in a two dimensional

sheet
Calving of glaciers has become a significant problem nowadays. So, it is
important to study the distribution of the sizes of the fragments calved from
the glacier. Besides, it is also important in mining, environmental sciences
and geophysics to study the distribution of fragment size when a large
piece of solid is broken into smaller pieces.
I studied a recent paper by Dhar on fragmentation of two dimensional
sheets by cracks that propagate, split and merge. I simulated a
geometrical model of fragmentation of a large area different from that
found different distribution of fragment area. I also calculated the ratios of
probabilities for small areas.

Problem statement :
In this model we consider a square grid and let the sites of the lattice be at
(x, t) where x 0, t 0 and x +t is even. t is the horizontal axis of the grid.
In this model we take a finite area of the lattice. We choose a bond at
random and propagate it in both +ve and ve t directions. In each
direction, the crack goes up or down with probability 1/2 and when it
merges with another existing crack, it stops.
We repeat this process for a large number of times and after that calculate
the fragment areas and their distribution.

Fragmentation with 10000 cracks:

Results:
In this simulation, we took a 999
999 lattice. On that lattice, we
repeated the process 10000
times. After that we calculated
the fragment area distribution.
The cumulative distribution
function(F(A)) was found to have
the form (area).33 for small areas.
The function 1 F(A) was found
to decay exponentially with the
coefficient 999m 999 where m
is the number of fragments.

Histogram of frequency of fragment vs area in log-log scale :