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Ellen Saada

Publications and source records attributed to Ellen Saada.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
arXiv2026

Hydrodynamic limit of the directed exclusion process

We derive the Euler (hyperbolic) hydrodynamic limit for the directed exclusion process (DEP), a one-dimensional conservative interacting particle system that preserves particle-hole symmetry while breaking left-right symmetry. The proof relies on an explicit multi-process coupling, which guarantees a strong form of attractiveness and macroscopic stability for the particle system. Further open questions about DEP are briefly discussed.

math.PR↗
arXiv2025

Random walks in a field of soft traps and criticality for the dissipative Abelian Sandpile Model

Motivated by the dissipative abelian sandpile model, we analyze the trajectories of a one-dimensional random walk in a landscape of soft traps. These traps, placed at increasing distances from each other, correspond to dissipative sites in the associated dissipative abelian sandpile model. We identify a critical growth rate of the sizes of intervals between successive traps where there is a transition between finiteness and non-finiteness of the expected survival time of the random walk. This corresponds to a transition between non-criticality and criticality of the associated dissipative abelian sandpile model. Therefore, in this setting, we thus identify precisely how much dissipation can be added to the original abelian sandpile model in order to disrupt its criticality.

math-ph↗
arXiv2025

Hydrodynamics and relaxation limit for multilane exclusion process and related hyperbolic systems

We investigate the hydrodynamic behavior and local equilibrium of the multilane exclusion process, whose invariant measures were studied in our previous paper \cite{mlt1a}. The dynamics on each lane follows a hyperbolic time scaling, whereas the interlane dynamics has an arbitrary time scaling. We prove the following: (i) the hydrodynamic behavior of the global density (i.e. summed over all lanes) is governed by a scalar conservation law; (ii) the latter, as well as the limit of individual lanes, is the relaxation limit of a weakly coupled hyperbolic system of balance laws that approximates the particle system. For the hydrodynamic limit, to highlight new phenomena arising in our model, a precise computation of the flux function, with the transitions between different possible shapes (and a physical interpretation thereof), is given for the two-lane model.

math.PR↗
arXiv2024

Duality for some models of epidemic spreading

We examine the role of boundaries and the structure of nontrivial duality functions for three non conservative interacting particle systems in one dimension that model epidemic spreading: (i) the diffusive contact process (DCP), (ii) a model that we introduce and call generalized diffusive contact process (GDCP), both in finite volume in contact with boundary reservoirs, i.e., with open boundaries, and (iii) the susceptible-infectious-recovered (SIR) model on $\Z$. We establish duality relations for each system through an analytical approach. It turns out that with open boundaries self-duality breaks down and qualitatively different properties compared to closed boundaries (i.e., finite volume without reservoirs) arise: both the DCP and GDCP are ergodic but no longer absorbing, while the respective dual processes are absorbing but not ergodic. We provide expressions for the stationary correlation functions in terms of the dual absorption probabilities. We perform explicit computations for a small sized DCP, and for arbitrary size in a particular setting of the GDCP. The duality function is factorized for the DCP and GDCP, contrary to the SIR model for which the duality relation is nonlocal and yields an explicit expression of the time evolution of some specific correlation functions, describing the time decay of the sizes of clusters of susceptible individuals.

math.PR↗
arXiv2024

Particle systems with sources and sinks

Local perturbations in conservative particle systems can have a non-local influence on the stationary measure. To capture this phenomenon, we analyze in this paper two toy models. We study the symmetric exclusion process on a countable set of sites V with a source at a given point (called the origin), starting from a Bernoulli product measure with density $\rho$. We prove that when the underlying random walk on V is recurrent, then the system evolves towards full occupation, whereas in the transient case we obtain a limiting distribution which is not product and has long-range correlations. For independent random walkers on V , we analyze the same problem, starting from a Poissonian measure. Via intertwining with a system of ODE's, we prove that the distribution is Poissonian at all later times t \> 0, and that the system ''explodes'' in the limit t $\rightarrow$ $\infty$ if and only if the underlying random walk is recurrent. In the transient case, the limiting density is a simple function of the Green's function of the random walk.

math.PR↗
arXiv2023

Couplings and attractiveness for general exclusion processes

Attractiveness is a fundamental tool to study interacting particle systems and the basic coupling construction is a usual route to prove this property, as for instance in the simple exclusion process. We consider here general exclusion processes where jump rates from an occupied site to an empty one depend not only on the location of the jump but also possibly on the whole configuration. These processes include in particular exclusion processes with speed change introduced by F. Spitzer in [18]. For such processes we derive necessary and sufficient conditions for attractiveness, through the construction of a coupled process under which discrepancies do not increase. We emphasize the fact that basic coupling is never attractive for this class of processes, except in the case of simple exclusion, and that the coupled processes presented here necessarily differ from it. We study various examples, for which we determine the set of extremal translation invariant and invariant probability measures.

math.PR↗
arXiv2022

Hydrodynamic and hydrostatic limit for a generalized contact process with mixed boundary conditions

We consider an interacting particle system which models the sterile insect technique. It is the superposition of a generalized contact process with exchanges of particles on a finite cylinder with open boundaries (see Kuoch et al., 2017). We show that when the system is in contact with reservoirs at different slowdown rates, the hydrodynamic limit is a set of coupled non linear reaction-diffusion equations with mixed boundary conditions. We also prove the hydrostatic limit when the macroscopic equations exhibit a unique attractor.

math.PR↗
arXiv2021

Invariant measures for multilane exclusion process

We consider the simple exclusion process on Z x {0, 1}, that is, an ''horizontal ladder'' composed of 2 lanes, depending on 6 parameters. Particles can jump according to a lane-dependent translation-invariant nearest neighbour jump kernel, i.e. ''horizontally'' along each lane, and ''vertically'' along the scales of the ladder. We prove that generically, the set of extremal invariant measures consists of (i) translation-invariant product Bernoulli measures; and, modulo translations along Z: (ii) at most two shock measures (i.e. asymptotic to Bernoulli measures at $\pm$$\infty$) with asymptotic densities 0 and 2; (iii) at most one (outside degenerate cases) shock measure with a density jump of magnitude 1. We fully determine this set for a range of parameter values. In fact, outside degenerate cases, there is at most one shock measure of type (iii). Our results can be generalized in several directions using the same approach and answer certain open questions formulated in \cite{ligd} as a step towards the process on $\mathbb{Z}^2$.

math.PR↗
arXiv2020

Zero-range process in random environment

We survey our recent articles dealing with one dimensional attractive zero range processes moving under site disorder. We suppose that the underlying random walks are biased to the right and so hyperbolic scaling is expected. Under the conditions of our model the process admits a maximal invariant measure. The initial focus of the project was to find conditions on the initial law to entail convergence in distribution to this maximal distribution, when it has a finite density. Somewhat surprisingly, necessary and sufficient conditions were found. In this part hydrody-namic results were employed chiefly as a tool to show distributional convergence but subsequently we developed a theory for hydrodynamic limits treating profiles possessing densities that did not admit corresponding equilibria. Finally we derived strong local equilibrium results.

math.PR↗
arXiv2019

Ergodicity of some dynamics of DNA sequences

We define interacting particle systems on configurations of the integer lattice (with values in some finite alphabet) by the superimposition of two dynamics: a substitution process with finite range rates, and a circular permutation mechanism(called "cut-and-paste") with possibly unbounded range. The model is motivated by the dynamics of DNA sequences: we consider an ergodic model for substitutions, the RN+YpR model ([BGP08]), with three particular cases, the models JC+cpg,T92+cpg, and RNc+YpR. We investigate whether they remain ergodic with the additional cut-and-paste mechanism, which models insertions and deletions of nucleotides. Using either duality or attractiveness techniques, we provide various sets of sufficient conditions, concerning only the substitution rates, for ergodicity of the superimposed process. They imply ergodicity of the models JC+cpg, T92+cpg as well as the attractive RNc+YpR, all with an additional cut-and-paste mechanism.

math.PR↗
arXiv2018

Symmetric simple exclusion process in dynamic environment: hydrodynamics

We consider the symmetric simple exclusion process in $\mathbb Z^d$ with quenched bounded dynamic random conductances and prove its hydrodynamic limit in path space. The main tool is the connection, due to the self-duality of the process, between the invariance principle for single particles starting from all points and the macroscopic behavior of the density field. While the hydrodynamic limit at fixed macroscopic times is obtained via a generalization to the time-inhomogeneous context of the strategy introduced in \cite{nagy_symmetric_2002}, in order to prove tightness for the sequence of empirical density fields we develop a new criterion based on the notion of uniform conditional stochastic continuity, following \cite{varadhan_stochasticprocesses_2007}. In conclusion, we show that uniform elliptic dynamic conductances provide an example of environments in which the so-called arbitrary starting point invariance principle may be derived from the invariance principle of a single particle starting from the origin. Therefore, our hydrodynamics result applies to the examples of quenched environments considered in, e.g.,\ \cite{andres2014}, \cite{andres_quenched_2018}, \cite{biskup_invariance_2019} in combination with the hypothesis of uniform ellipticity.

math.PR↗
arXiv2018

Mean-field avalanche size exponent for sandpiles on Galton-Watson trees

We show that in abelian sandpiles on infinite Galton-Watson trees, the probability that the total avalanche has more than $t$ topplings decays as $t^{-1/2}$. We prove both quenched and annealed bounds, under suitable moment conditions. Our proofs are based on an analysis of the conductance martingale of Morris (2003), that was previously used by Lyons, Morris and Schramm (2008) to study uniform spanning forests on $\mathbb{Z}^d$, $d\geq 3$, and other transient graphs.

math.PR↗
arXiv2017

Non-criticality criteria for Abelian sandpile models with sources and sinks

We prove that the Abelian sandpile model on a random binary and binomial tree, as introduced in \cite{rrs}, is not critical for all branching probabilities $p<1$; by estimating the tail of the annealed survival time of a random walk on the binary tree with randomly placed traps, we obtain some more information about the exponential tail of the avalanche radius. Next we study the sandpile model on $\mathbb{Z}^d$ with some additional dissipative sites: we provide examples and sufficient conditions for non-criticality; we also make a connection with the parabolic Anderson model. Finally we initiate the study of the sandpile model with both sources and sinks and give a sufficient condition for non-criticality in the presence of a finite number of sources, using a connection with the homogeneous pinning model.

math.PR↗
arXiv2016

A boundary driven generalised contact process with exchange of particles: Hydrodynamics in infinite volume

We consider a two species process which evolves in a finite or infinite domain in contact with particles reservoirs at different densities, according to the superposition of a generalised contact process and a rapid-stirring dynamics in the bulk of the domain, and a creation/annihilation mechanism at its boundaries. For this process, we study the law of large numbers for densities and current. The limiting equations are given by a system of non-linear reaction-diffusion equations with Dirichlet boundary conditions.

math.PR↗
arXiv2016

Invariant measures of Mass Migration Processes

We introduce the Mass Migration Process (MMP), a conservative particle system on ${\mathbb N}^{{\mathbb Z}^d}$. It consists in jumps of $k$ particles ($k\ge 1$) between sites, with a jump rate depending only on the state of the system at the departure and arrival sites of the jump. It generalizes misanthropes processes, hence in particular zero range and target processes. After the construction of MMP, our main focus is on its invariant measures. We obtain necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of translation-invariant and invariant product probability measures. In the particular cases of asymmetric mass migration zero range and mass migration target dynamics, these conditions yield explicit solutions. If these processes are moreover attractive, we obtain a full characterization of all translation-invariant, invariant probability measures. We also consider attractiveness properties (through couplings) and condensation phenomena for MMP. We illustrate our results on many examples; in particular, we prove the coexistence of both condensation and attractiveness in one of them.

math.PR↗
arXiv2016

A shape theorem for an epidemic model in dimension $d\ge 3$

We prove a shape theorem for the set of infected individuals in a spatial epidemic model with 3 states (susceptible-infected-recovered) on ${\mathbb Z}^d,d\ge 3$, when there is no extinction of the infection. For this, we derive percolation estimates (using dynamic renormalization techniques) for a locally dependent random graph in correspondence with the epidemic model.

math.PR↗
arXiv2014

Approaching criticality via the zero dissipation limit in the abelian avalanche model

The discrete height abelian sandpile model was introduced by Bak, Tang & Wiesenfeld and Dhar as an example for the concept of self-organized criticality. When the model is modified to allow grains to disappear on each toppling, it is called bulk-dissipative. We provide a detailed study of a continuous height version of the abelian sandpile model, called the abelian avalanche model, which allows an arbitrarily small amount of dissipation to take place on every toppling. We prove that for non-zero dissipation, the infinite volume limit of the stationary measure of the abelian avalanche model exists and can be obtained via a weighted spanning tree measure. We show that in the whole non-zero dissipation regime, the model is not critical, i.e., spatial covariances of local observables decay exponentially. We then study the zero dissipation limit and prove that the self-organized critical model is recovered, both for the stationary measure and for the dynamics. We obtain rigorous bounds on toppling probabilities and introduce an exponent describing their scaling at criticality. We rigorously establish the mean-field value of this exponent for $d > 4$.

math.PR↗