arXiv subjects

Éric Brunet

Publications and source records attributed to Éric Brunet.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

The flux of particles in a one-dimensional Fleming-Viot process

The Fleming-Viot process describes a system of $N$ particles diffusing on a graph with an absorbing site. Whenever one of the particles is absorbed, it is replaced by a new particle at the position of one of the $N-1$ remaining particles. Here we consider the case where the particles lie on the semi-infinite line with a biased diffusion towards the origin which is the absorbing site. In the large $N$ limit, the evolution of the density becomes deterministic and has a number of characteristics similar to the Fisher-KPP equation: a one-parameter family of steady state solutions, dependence of the long time asymptotics on the initial conditions, Bramson logarithmic shift, etc. One noticeable difference, however, is that in the Fleming-Viot case, the solution can be computed explicitly for arbitrary initial conditions and at an arbitrary time. By modifying the diffusion rule near the origin, one can produce a transition in the flux of absorbed particles, very similar to the pushed-pulled transition in travelling waves. Lastly, using a cut-off approximation (which is known to be correct in the theory of travelling waves), we derive a number of predictions for the leading large $N$ correction of the flux of absorbed particles.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2025

Operator Spreading, Duality, and the Noisy Long-Range FKPP Equation

Operator spreading provides a new characterization of quantum chaos beyond the semi-classical limit. There are two complementary views of how the characteristic size of an operator, also known as the butterfly light cone, grows under chaotic quantum time evolution: A discrete stochastic population dynamics or a stochastic reaction-diffusion equation in the continuum. When the interaction decays as a power function of distance, the discrete population dynamics model features superlinear butterfly light cones with stretched exponential or power-law scaling. Its continuum counterpart, a noisy long-range Fisher-Kolmogorov-Petrovsky-Piscunov (FKPP) equation, remains less understood. We use a mathematical duality to demonstrate their equivalence through an intermediate model, which replaces the hard local population limit by an equilibrium population. Through an algorithm with no finite size effect, we demonstrate numerically remarkable agreements in their light cone scalings.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2023

Kinetics of information scrambling in correlated electrons: disorder-driven transition from shock-wave to FKPP dynamics

Quenched disorder slows down the scrambling of quantum information. Using a bottom-up approach, we formulate a kinetic theory of scrambling in a correlated metal near a superconducting transition, following the scrambling dynamics as the impurity scattering rate is increased. Within this framework, we rigorously show that the butterfly velocity $v$ is bounded by the light cone velocity $v_{\rm lc }$ set by the Fermi velocity. We analytically identify a disorder-driven dynamical transition occurring at small but finite disorder strength between a spreading of information characterized at late times by a discontinuous shock wave propagating at the maximum velocity $v_{\rm lc}$, and a smooth traveling wave belonging to the Fisher or Kolmogorov-Petrovsky-Piskunov (FKPP) class and propagating at a slower, if not considerably slower, velocity $v$. In the diffusive regime, we establish the relation $v^2/λ_{\rm FKPP} \sim D_{\rm el}$ where $λ_{\rm FKPP}$ is the Lyapunov exponent set by the inelastic scattering rate and $D_{\rm el}$ is the elastic diffusion constant.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2023

Ahead of the Fisher-KPP front

The solution h to the Fisher-KPP equation with a steep enough initial condition develops into a front moving at velocity 2, with logarithmic corrections to its position. In this paper we investigate the value h(c t, t) of the solution ahead of the front, at time t and position c t, with c > 2. That value goes to zero exponentially fast with time, with a well-known rate, but the prefactor depends in a non-trivial way of c, the initial condition and the non-linearity in the equation. We compute an asymptotic expansion of that prefactor for velocities c close to 2. The expansion is surprisingly explicit and irregular. The main tool of this paper is the so-called "magical expression" which relates the position of the front, the initial condition, and the quantity we investigate.

math.AP↗

arXiv2023

High temperature behaviors of the directed polymer on a cylinder

In this paper, we study the free energy of the directed polymer on a cylinder of radius $L$ with the inverse temperature $β$. Assuming the random environment is given by a Gaussian process that is white in time and smooth in space, with an arbitrary compactly supported spatial covariance function, we obtain precise scaling behaviors of the limiting free energy for high temperatures $β\ll1$, followed by large $L\gg1$, in all dimensions. Our approach is based on a perturbative expansion of the PDE hierarchy satisfied by the multipoint correlation function of the polymer endpoint distribution. For the random environment given by the $1+1$ spacetime white noise, we derive an explicit expression of the limiting free energy, confirming the result obtained through the replica method in [12].

math.PR↗

arXiv2022

Traveling/non-traveling phase transition and non-ergodic properties in the random transverse-field Ising model on the Cayley tree

We study the random transverse field Ising model on a finite Cayley tree. This enables us to probe key questions arising in other important disordered quantum systems, in particular the Anderson transition and the problem of dirty bosons on the Cayley tree, or the emergence of non-ergodic properties in such systems. We numerically investigate this problem building on the cavity mean-field method complemented by state-of-the art finite-size scaling analysis. Our numerics agree very well with analytical results based on an analogy with the traveling wave problem of a branching random walk in the presence of an absorbing wall. Critical properties and finite-size corrections for the zero-temperature paramagnetic-ferromagnetic transition are studied both for constant and algebraically vanishing boundary conditions. In the later case, we reveal a regime which is reminiscent of the non-ergodic delocalized phase observed in other systems, thus shedding some light on critical issues in the context of disordered quantum systems, such as Anderson transitions, the many-body localization or disordered bosons in infinite dimensions.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗

arXiv2020

The distance between the two BBM leaders

We study the distance between the two rightmost particles in branching Brownian motion. Derrida and the second author have shown that the long-time limit $d_{12}$ of this random variable can be expressed in terms of PDEs related to the Fisher--KPP equation. We use such a representation to determine the sharp asymptotics of $\mathbb{P}(d_{12} > a)$ as $a\to+\infty$. These tail asymptotics were previously known to "exponential order;" we discover an algebraic correction to this behavior.

math.AP↗

arXiv2020

A simple backward construction of Branching Brownian motion with large displacement and applications

In this article, we study the extremal processes of branching Brownian motions conditioned on having an unusually large maximum. The limiting point measures form a one-parameter family and are the decoration point measures in the extremal processes of several branching processes, including branching Brownian motions with variable speed and multitype branching Brownian motions. We give a new, alternative representation of these point measures and we show that they form a continuous family. This also yields a simple probabilistic expression for the constant that appears in the large deviation probability of having a large displacement. As an application, we show that Bovier and Hartung (2015)'s results about variable speed branching Brownian motion also describe the extremal point process of branching Ornstein-Uhlenbeck processes.

math.PR↗

arXiv2020

Innovation and imitation

We study several models of growth driven by innovation and imitation by a continuum of firms, focusing on the interaction between the two. We first investigate a model on a technology ladder where innovation and imitation combine to generate a balanced growth path (BGP) with compact support, and with productivity distributions for firms that are truncated power-laws. We start with a simple model where firms can adopt technologies of other firms with higher productivities according to exogenous probabilities. We then study the case where the adoption probabilities depend on the probability distribution of productivities at each time. We finally consider models with a finite number of firms, which by construction have firm productivity distributions with bounded support. Stochastic imitation and innovation can make the distance of the productivity frontier to the lowest productivity level fluctuate, and this distance can occasionally become large. Alternatively, if we fix the length of the support of the productivity distribution because firms too far from the frontier cannot survive, the number of firms can fluctuate randomly.

econ.TH↗

arXiv2020

How to generate the tip of branching random walks evolved to large times

In a branching process, the number of particles increases exponentially with time, which makes numerical simulations for large times difficult. In many applications, however, only the region close to the extremal particles is relevant (the "tip"). We present a simple algorithm which allows to simulate a branching random walk in one dimension, keeping only the particles that arrive within some distance of the rightmost particle at a predefined time $T$. The complexity of the algorithm grows linearly with $T$. We can furthermore choose to require that the realizations have their rightmost particle arbitrarily far on the right from its typical position. We illustrate our algorithm by evaluating an observable for which no other practical method is known.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2020

A free boundary problem arising from branching Brownian motion with selection

We study a free boundary problem for a parabolic partial differential equation in which the solution is coupled to the moving boundary through an integral constraint. The problem arises as the hydrodynamic limit of an interacting particle system involving branching Brownian motion with selection, the so-called Brownian bees model which is studied in a companion paper. In this paper we prove existence and uniqueness of the solution to the free boundary problem, and we characterise the behaviour of the solution in the large time limit.

math.AP↗

arXiv2018

A new approach to computing the asymptotics of the position of Fisher-KPP fronts

This paper presents a novel way of computing front positions in Fisher-KPP equations. Our method is based on an exact relation between the Laplace transform of the initial condition and some integral functional of the front position. Using singularity analysis, one can obtain the asymptotics of the front position up to the O(log t/t) term. Our approach is robust and can be generalised to other front equations.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2017

Exact solution and precise asymptotics of a Fisher-KPP type front

The present work concerns a version of the Fisher-KPP equation where the nonlinear term is replaced by a saturation mechanism, yielding a free boundary problem with mixed conditions. Following an idea proposed in [BrunetDerrida.2015], we show that the Laplace transform of the initial condition is directly related to some functional of the front position $μ_t$. We then obtain precise asymptotics of the front position by means of singularity analysis. In particular, we recover the so-called Ebert and van Saarloos correction [EbertvanSaarloos.2000], we obtain an additional term of order $\log t /t$ in this expansion, and we give precise conditions on the initial condition for those terms to be present.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2016

A note of the convergence of the Fisher-KPP front centred around its $α$-level

We consider the solution $u(x,t)$ of the Fisher-KPP equation $\partial_t u=\partial_x^2u+u-u^2$ centred around its $α$-level $μ_t^{(α)}$ defined as $u(μ_t^{(α)},t)=α$. It is well known that for an initial datum that decreases fast enough, then $u(μ_t^{(α)}+x,t)$ converges as $t\to\infty$ to the critical travelling wave. We study in this paper the speed of this convergence and the asymptotic expansion of $μ_t^{(α)}$ for large~$t$. It is known from Bramson that for initial conditions that decay fast enough, one has $μ_t^{(α)}=2t-(3/2)\ln t+\text{Cste}+o(1)$. Work is under way \cite{nrr} to show that the $o(1)$ in the expansion is in fact a $k^{(α)}/\sqrt t+\mathcal O(t^{ε-1})$ for any $ε>0$ for some $k^{(α)}$, where it is not clear at this point whether $k^{(α)}$ depends or not on $α$. We show that, unless the time derivative of $μ_t^{(α)}$ has a very unexpected behaviour at infinity, the coefficient $k^{(α)}$ does not, in fact, depend on $α$. We also conjecture that, for an initial condition that decays fast enough, one has in fact $μ_t^{(α)}=2t-(3/2)\ln t+\text{Cste}-(3\sqrtπ)/\sqrt t+g (\ln t)/t +o (1/t)$ for some constant~$g$ which does not depend on $α$.

math.AP↗

arXiv2016

Branching Brownian motion with absorption and the all-time minimum of branching Brownian motion with drift

We study a dyadic branching Brownian motion on the real line with absorption at 0, drift $μ\in \mathbb{R}$ and started from a single particle at position $x>0.$ When $μ$ is large enough so that the process has a positive probability of survival, we consider $K(t),$ the number of individuals absorbed at 0 by time $t$ and for $s\ge 0$ the functions $ω_s(x):= \mathbb{E}^x[s^{K(\infty)}].$ We show that $ω_s<\infty$ if and only of $s\in[0,s_0]$ for some $s_0>1$ and we study the properties of these functions. Furthermore, for $s=0, ω(x) := ω_0(x) =\mathbb{P}^x(K(\infty)=0)$ is the cumulative distribution function of the all time minimum of the branching Brownian motion with drift started at 0 without absorption. We give three descriptions of the family $ω_s, s\in [0,s_0]$ through a single pair of functions, as the two extremal solutions of the Kolmogorov-Petrovskii-Piskunov (KPP) traveling wave equation on the half-line, through a martingale representation and as an explicit series expansion. We also obtain a precise result concerning the tail behavior of $K(\infty)$. In addition, in the regime where $K(\infty)>0$ almost surely, we show that $u(x,t) := \mathbb{P}^x(K(t)=0)$ suitably centered converges to the KPP critical travelling wave on the whole real line.

math.PR↗

arXiv2016

The number of accessible paths in the hypercube

Motivated by an evolutionary biology question, we study the following problem: we consider the hypercube $\{0,1\}^L$ where each node carries an independent random variable uniformly distributed on $[0,1]$, except $(1,1,\ldots,1)$ which carries the value $1$ and $(0,0,\ldots,0)$ which carries the value $x\in[0,1]$. We study the number $Θ$ of paths from vertex $(0,0,\ldots,0)$ to the opposite vertex $(1,1,\ldots,1)$ along which the values on the nodes form an increasing sequence. We show that if the value on $(0,0,\ldots,0)$ is set to $x=X/L$ then $Θ/L$ converges in law as $L\to\infty$ to $\mathrm{e}^{-X}$ times the product of two standard independent exponential variables. As a first step in the analysis, we study the same question when the graph is that of a tree where the root has arity $L$, each node at level 1 has arity $L-1$, \ldots, and the nodes at level $L-1$ have only one offspring which are the leaves of the tree (all the leaves are assigned the value 1, the root the value $x\in[0,1]$).

math.PR↗

arXiv2015

Vanishing corrections for the position in a linear model of FKPP fronts

Take the linearised FKPP equation \[\partial_t h =\partial^2_x h +h\] with boundary condition $h(m(t),t)=0$. Depending on the behaviour of the initial condition $h_0(x)=h(x,0)$ we obtain the asymptotics - up to a $o(1)$ term $r(t)$ - of the absorbing boundary $m(t)$ such that $ω(x):=\lim_t h(x+m(t) ,t)$ exists and is non-trivial. In particular, as in Bramson's results for the non-linear FKPP equation, we recover the celebrated $-(3/2)\log t$ correction for initial conditions decaying faster than $x^νe^{-x}$ for some $ν<-2$. Furthermore, when we are in this regime, the main result of the present work is the identification (to first order) of the $r(t)$ term which ensures the fastest convergence to $ω(x)$. When $h_0(x)$ decays faster than $x^νe^{-x}$ for some $ν<-3$, we show that $r(t)$ must be chosen to be $-3\sqrt{π/t}$ which is precisely the term predicted heuristically by Ebert-van Saarloos in the non-linear case. When the initial condition decays as $x^νe^{-x}$ for some $ν\in [-3,-2)$, we show that even though we are still in the regime where Bramson's correction is $-(3/2)\log t$, the Ebert-van Saarloos correction has to be modified. Similar results were recently obtained by Henderson using an analytical approach and only for compactly supported initial conditions.

math.PR↗

arXiv2015

An exactly solvable travelling wave equation in the Fisher-KPP class

For a simple one dimensional lattice version of a travelling wave equation, we obtain an exact relation between the initial condition and the position of the front at any later time. This exact relation takes the form of an inverse problem: given the times $t_n$ at which the travelling wave reaches the positions $n$, one can deduce the initial profile. We show, by means of complex analysis, that a number of known properties of travelling wave equations in the Fisher-KPP class can be recovered, in particular Bramson's shifts of the positions. We also recover and generalize Ebert-van Saarloos' corrections depending on the initial condition.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗