Abstract
AbstractWe study an energy-constrained random walker on a length-Ninterval of the one-dimensional integer lattice, with boundary reflection. The walker consumes one unit of energy for every step taken in the interior, and energy is replenished up to a capacity of Mon each boundary visit. We establish largeN, Mdistributional asymptotics for the lifetime of the walker, i.e., the first time at which the walker runs out of energy while in the interior. Three phases are exhibited. When$$M \ll N^2$$M≪N2(energy is scarce), we show that there is anM-scale limit distribution related to a Darling–Mandelbrot law, while when$$M \gg N^2$$M≫N2(energy is plentiful) we show that there is an exponential limit distribution on a stretched-exponential scale. In the critical case where$$M / N^2 \rightarrow \rho \in (0,\infty )$$M/N2→ρ∈(0,∞), we show that there is anM-scale limit in terms of an infinitely-divisible distribution expressed via certain theta functions.
Funder
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Subject
Mathematical Physics,Statistical and Nonlinear Physics
Reference42 articles.
1. Aldous, D.: Probability Approximations via the Poisson Clumping Heuristic. Springer, New York (1989)
2. Anděl, J., Hudecová, S.: Variance of the game duration in the gambler’s ruin problem. Stat. Probab. Lett. 82, 1750–1754 (2012)
3. Arov, D.Z., Bobrov, A.A.: The extreme terms of a sample and their role in the sum of independent variables. Theory Probab. Appl. 5, 377–396 (1960)
4. Abramowitz, M., Stegun , I.A.: (eds.) Handbook of Mathematical Functions, National Bureau of Standards, Applied Mathematics Series, vol. 55. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington (1965)
5. Bach, E.: Moments in the duration of play. Stat. Probab. Lett. 36, 1–7 (1997)