Maximum distributions of bridges of noncolliding Brownian paths

Abstract

The one-dimensional Brownian motion starting from the origin at time $t=0$, conditioned to return to the origin at time $t=1$ and to stay positive during time interval $0 < t < 1$, is called the Bessel bridge with duration 1. We consider the $N$-particle system of such Bessel bridges conditioned never to collide with each other in $0 < t < 1$, which is the continuum limit of the vicious walk model in watermelon configuration with a wall. Distributions of maximum-values of paths attained in the time interval $t \in (0,1)$ are studied to characterize the statistics of random patterns of the repulsive paths on the spatio-temporal plane. For the outermost path, the distribution function of maximum value is exactly determined for general $N$. We show that the present $N$-path system of noncolliding Bessel bridges is realized as the positive-eigenvalue process of the $2N \times 2N$ matrix-valued Brownian bridge in the symmetry class C. Using this fact computer simulations are performed and numerical results on the $N$-dependence of the maximum-value distributions of the inner paths are reported. The present work demonstrates that the extreme-value problems of noncolliding paths are related with the random matrix theory, representation theory of symmetry, and the number theory.