Random paths with bounded local time (Q983892)

The goal of this paper is to describe the macroscopic behavior of a process which locally behaves like a Brownian motion, but satisfies a global constraint of a self-avoiding nature. The authors consider one dimensional Brownian motion conditioned on the event that the local time of the process is bounded by a fixed constant at every time and position. Then, they define a probability measure on continuous paths corresponding to this conditioning and prove that the speed of this process is about 4.58 with respect to this probability measure. The idea of the proof is to apply the Ray-Knight theorem according to which the local times of Brownian motion between the two endpoints behave as the square radius of a two-dimensional Brownian motion. Then, by the well-known results due to Pinsky on \textit{metastability}, they conclude that the speed of the process is greater than 1. Moreover, the authors describe some other related works such as Harmonic crystal with hard wall repulsion, Brownian motion with limited local time and Edwards and Domb-Joyce polymer models.