Convex Hull of N Planar Brownian Motions: Exact Results and an Application to Ecology

Julien Randon-Furling; Satya N. Majumdar; Alain Comtet

doi:10.1103/physrevlett.103.140602

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arXiv · 0907.0921

Convex Hull of N Planar Brownian Motions: Exact Results and an Application to Ecology

Julien Randon-Furling·Satya N. Majumdar·Alain Comtet

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Abstract

We compute exactly the mean perimeter and area of the convex hull of N independent planar Brownian paths each of duration T, both for open and closed paths. We show that the mean perimeter < L_N > = \alpha_N, \sqrt{T} and the mean area = \beta_N T for all T. The prefactors \alpha_N and \beta_N, computed exactly for all N, increase very slowly (logarithmically) with increasing N. This slow growth is a consequence of extreme value statistics and has interesting implication in ecological context in estimating the home range of a herd of animals with population size N.

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Julien Randon-Furling, Satya N. Majumdar, Alain Comtet. 2009-07-06. Convex Hull of N Planar Brownian Motions: Exact Results and an Application to Ecology. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.103.140602

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