Universality for one-dimensional hierarchical coalescence processes with double and triple merges (Q2448686)

This paper presents a study of one-dimensional hierarchical coalescence processes (HCPs) where two or three neighboring domains can merge. This process consists of an infinite sequence of stochastic coalescence processes, where each item occurs in a different ``epoch'' evolving with time \(t\rightarrow\infty\). The evolutions in other epochs are connected to each other in such a way that the initial distribution of epoch \(n+1\) coincides with the final distribution of epoch \(n\). A motivation for these considerations is the fact that several HCPs were already used to model non-equilibrium evolution of one-dimensional systems whose dynamics are dominated by coalescence. The authors were able to prove a limit theorem that extends the so far presented considerations in literature thanks to the assumption that the distribution at the beginning of the first epoch is described by a renewal simple point process. They give a full description of the time evolution of the expected value of regular observables in terms of an ordinary differential equation and the characterization of the infinitesimal generator for the dynamics inside each epoch. The paper is divided into nine sections. After the introduction, the main results are presented in Section 2. The next successive sections are devoted to the proofs of the many important theorems that are given at the beginning.