Stability of a growth process generated by monomer filling with nearest-neighbour cooperative effects (Q981005)

A growth process generated by sequential absorbtion of particles on a one-dimensional lattice torus is considered. It is the process formed by the numbers of adsorbed particles at lattice sites, called heights. Let \(\{1,2, \dots, N+1\}\) be a one-dimensional lattice torus with \(N+1\) points, \(N\geq 2\). The growth process is certain discrete-time Markov chain \[ \xi (t)=\{\xi_1(t), \dots, \xi_{N+1}(t)\}, t\in \mathbb{Z}_+=\{0, 1, 2, \dots\} \] with values in \(\mathbb{Z}^{N+1}_+\) and with specified transition probabilities. Three possibilities are considered for neighbourhood \(U_i\): \[ \begin{aligned} & U_i=\{i\}, {\text{ no \;interaction}}, \\ & U_i=\{i, i+1\},\;{\text{ asymmetric \;interaction}} \\ & {\text{ and}} \\ & U_i=\{i-1, i, i+1\},\;{\text{ symmetric \;interaction}} \end{aligned} \] The Introduction contains discussion on the model considered and the results. The motivation and references related to the problem are discussed rather wide. The stability of a growth process is described via the process of differences \[ \zeta (t) = \{\zeta_1(t), \dots ,\zeta_N \}\in \mathbb{Z}^N,\quad t\in \mathbb{Z}_t \] where \[ \zeta_i(t)=(\xi_i(t)-\xi_{N+1}),\quad i=1,\dots , N . \] The growth process is called stable if process \(\zeta (t)\) is an ergodic Markov chain. Otherwise it is called unstable. Stability or unstability of the process depend on some characteristics of the model and are wide discussed in subsection~1.2. Subsection~1.3 contains the results. The transience of process \(\zeta (t)\) is understood as \(\lim_{t\to\infty}|\zeta (t)|\to\infty\). Theorems 1,2 and 3 present the condition for the Markov chain \(\{\zeta (t), t\in \mathbb{Z}_t\}\) to be ergodic or transient correspondingly in neighbourhoods \(U_i,\;i=\{1, 2\dots, N\}\) indicated above. Section 2 contains the proofs. In section~3 two theorems containing constructive martingale criteria for ergodicity and transience are stated. Their proofs can be found in: [\textit{G. Fayolle, V. A. Malyshev} and \textit{M. V. Menshikov}, Topics in the constructive theory of countable Markov chains. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (1995; Zbl 0823.60053)]. The volume of the paper is 23 pages. The list of references contains 22 positions.