Continuous-time random walk

In mathematics, a continuous-time random walk (CTRW) is a generalization of a random walk where the wandering particle waits for a random time between jumps. It is a stochastic jump process with arbitrary distributions of jump lengths and waiting times. More generally it can be seen to be a special case of a Markov renewal process.

Motivation

CTRW was introduced by Montroll and Weiss as a generalization of physical diffusion processes to effectively describe anomalous diffusion, i.e., the super- and sub-diffusive cases. An equivalent formulation of the CTRW is given by generalized master equations. A connection between CTRWs and diffusion equations with fractional time derivatives has been established. Similarly, time-space fractional diffusion equations can be considered as CTRWs with continuously distributed jumps or continuum approximations of CTRWs on lattices.

Formulation

A simple formulation of a CTRW is to consider the stochastic process Failed to parse (SVG (MathML can be enabled via browser plugin): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/":): {\displaystyle X(t)} defined by

Failed to parse (Conversion error. Server ("https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_") reported: "Cannot get mml. Server problem."): {\displaystyle X(t)=X_{0}+\sum _{i=1}^{N(t)}\Delta X_{i},}

whose increments $\Delta X_{i}$ are iid random variables taking values in a domain $\Omega$ and Failed to parse (SVG (MathML can be enabled via browser plugin): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/":): {\displaystyle N(t)} is the number of jumps in the interval Failed to parse (SVG (MathML can be enabled via browser plugin): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/":): {\displaystyle (0,t)} . The probability for the process taking the value $X$ at time $t$ is then given by

$P(X,t)=\sum _{n=0}^{\infty }P(n,t)P_{n}(X).$

Here Failed to parse (Conversion error. Server ("https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_") reported: "Cannot get mml. Server problem."): {\displaystyle P_{n}(X)} is the probability for the process taking the value $X$ after Failed to parse (SVG (MathML can be enabled via browser plugin): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/":): {\displaystyle n} jumps, and Failed to parse (SVG (MathML can be enabled via browser plugin): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/":): {\displaystyle P(n,t)} is the probability of having Failed to parse (SVG (MathML can be enabled via browser plugin): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/":): {\displaystyle n} jumps after time Failed to parse (SVG (MathML can be enabled via browser plugin): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/":): {\displaystyle t} .

Montroll–Weiss formula

We denote by Failed to parse (SVG (MathML can be enabled via browser plugin): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/":): {\displaystyle \tau} the waiting time in between two jumps of $N(t)$ and by Failed to parse (SVG (MathML can be enabled via browser plugin): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/":): {\displaystyle \psi(\tau)} its distribution. The Laplace transform of Failed to parse (SVG (MathML can be enabled via browser plugin): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/":): {\displaystyle \psi(\tau)} is defined by

Failed to parse (SVG (MathML can be enabled via browser plugin): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/":): {\displaystyle \tilde{\psi}(s)=\int_0^{\infty} d\tau \, e^{-\tau s} \psi(\tau). }

Similarly, the characteristic function of the jump distribution Failed to parse (SVG (MathML can be enabled via browser plugin): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/":): {\displaystyle f(\Delta X) } is given by its Fourier transform:

Failed to parse (SVG (MathML can be enabled via browser plugin): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/":): {\displaystyle \hat{f}(k)=\int_\Omega d(\Delta X) \, e^{i k\Delta X} f(\Delta X). }

One can show that the Laplace–Fourier transform of the probability $P(X,t)$ is given by

Failed to parse (SVG (MathML can be enabled via browser plugin): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/":): {\displaystyle \hat{\tilde{P}}(k,s) = \frac{1-\tilde{\psi}(s)}{s} \frac{1}{1-\tilde{\psi}(s)\hat{f}(k)}. }

The above is called the Montroll–Weiss formula.