Asymptotic behavior of Aldous' gossip process (Q657708)

Consider a stochastic model of growing disks on a (continuous) \(N\) by \(N\) torus. The radius of each disk grows deterministically at a linear speed. Furthermore, according to a spatially uniform Poisson point process on the torus, at a rate that is proportional to the area covered by the disks, new disks (of radius \(0\)) are created and start growing. The points on the torus are interpreted as individuals and the covered points are those who know a certain gossip. The interesting case is where the rate at which new disks are created is \(N^{-\alpha}\) times the area \(C_t\) that is already covered (for some \(\alpha<3\)). The authors show that (asymptotically) only the initial part in the evolution (where \(C_t\leq \varepsilon N^2\) for some fixed \(\varepsilon>0\)) is random and that the growth afterwards is deterministic. Furthermore, they show that the time at which the whole torus is covered by disks grows asymptotically as (a deterministic multiple of) \(N^{\alpha/3}\log(N)\).