Three-speed ballistic annihilation: phase transition and universality

DOI10.1007/S00029-021-00701-XMaRDI QIDQ821033zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors John Haslegrave, Laurent Tournier, Vladas Sidoravicius

Publication date 20 September 2021

Published in Selecta Mathematica. New Series (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1811.08709

zbMATH Keywords

ballistic annihilationinteracting particle systemphase transition

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Interacting random processes; statistical mechanics type models; percolation theory (60K35)

Abstract: We consider ballistic annihilation, a model for chemical reactions first introduced in the 1980's physics literature. In this particle system, initial locations are given by a renewal process on the line, motions are ballistic - i.e. each particle is assigned an i.i.d. constant velocity - and collisions between pairs of particles result in mutual annihilation. We focus on the case when the velocities are symmetrically distributed among three values, i.e. particles either remain static (with given probability~$p$) or move at constant velocity uniformly chosen among $pm1$. We establish that this model goes through a phase transition at $p_c=1/4$ between a subcritical regime where every particle eventually annihilates, and a supercritical regime where a positive density of static particles is never hit, confirming 1990s predictions of Droz et al. for the particular case of a Poisson process. Our result encompasses cases where triple collisions can happen; these are resolved by annihilation of one static and one randomly chosen moving particle. Our arguments, of combinatorial nature, show that, although the model is not completely solvable, certain large scale features can be explicitly computed, and are universal, i.e. insensitive to the distribution of the initial point process. In particular, in the critical and subcritical regimes, the asymptotics of the time decay of the densities of each type of particle is universal (among exponentially integrable interdistance distributions) and, in the supercritical regime, the distribution of the ``skyline process, i.e. the process restricted to the last particles to ever visit a location, has a universal description. We also prove that an alternative model introduced by Burdinski, Gupta and Junge does not share the same universality as our model, and find numerical bounds on its critical probability.

Recommendations

• Combinatorial universality in three-speed ballistic annihilation
• The phase structure of asymmetric ballistic annihilation
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Cited in

(13)

• Exact solution of two-species ballistic annihilation with general pair-reaction probability
• Combinatorial universality in three-speed ballistic annihilation
• The phase structure of asymmetric ballistic annihilation
• Convergence to self-similarity for ballistic annihilation dynamics
• The bullet problem with discrete speeds
• Two scales in asynchronous ballistic annihilation
• Exact solution of homogeneous ballistic annihilation with a general reaction probability
• The upper threshold in ballistic annihilation
• Non-universality in clustered ballistic annihilation
• Three-velocity coalescing ballistic annihilation
• Arrivals are universal in coalescing ballistic annihilation
• Four-parameter coalescing ballistic annihilation
• Balanced two-type annihilation: mean-field asymptotics

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