A Guide To First Passage Processes

The basic theory presented in a way which emphasizes intuition, problem-solving and the connections with other fields.

Random processes are one of the most powerful tools in the study and understanding of countless phenomena in natural and social sciences.The book is a complete medium-level introduction to the subject. The book is written in a clear and pedagogical manner but with enough rigor and scope that can appeal to both students and researchers.This book is addressed to advanced students and professional researchers in many branches of science where level crossings and extremes appear but with some particular emphasis on some applications in socio-economic systems.

The book contains review articles on recent advances in first-passage phenomena and applications contributed by leading international experts. It is intended for graduate students and researchers who are interested in learning about this intriguing and important topic. Contents:Arrival Statistics and Exploration Properties of Mortal Walkers (S B Yuste, E Abad and K Lindenberg)First Passage of a Randomly Accelerated Particle (T W Burkhardt)First Passage Problems in Anomalous Diffusion (A Rosso and A Zoia)First-Passage Times of Intermittent Random Walks (O Bénichou and R Voituriez)First-Passage Phenomena on Finite Inhomogeneous Networks (E Agliari and D Cassi)Effective Spectral Dimension in Scale-Free Networks (S Hwang, D-S Lee and B Kahng)First-Passage Statistics for Random Walks in Bounded Domains (R Voituriez and O Bénichou)First Passage Behavior of Multi-Dimensional Fractional Brownian Motion and Application to Reaction Phenomena (J-H Jeon, A V Chechkin and R Metzler)Trajectory-to-Trajectory Fluctuations in First-Passage Phenomena in Bounded Domains (T G Mattos, C Mejía-Monasterio, R Metzler, G Oshanin and G Schehr)Exact Record and Order Statists of Random Walk via First-Passage Ideas (G Schehr and S N Majumdar)First Passage in a Conical Geometry and Ordering of Brownian Particles (E Ben-Naim and P L Krapivsky)First Passage Time Problems in Biophysical Jump Processes with Fast Kinetics (P C Bressloff and J M Newby)First Passage Problems in Biology (T Chou and M R D'Orsogna)The Effect of Detection Mechanisms on Spatial Search and Foraging (D Campos and V Méndez)Search in Random Media with Lévy Flights (E Gelenbe and O H Abdelrahman)Exit Strategies: Visual Search and the Quitting Time Problem (T S Horowitz)Statistical Physics of Evolutionary Trajectories on Fitness Landscapes (M Manhart and A V Morozov)Some Applications of First-Passage Ideas to Finance (R Chicheportiche and J-P Bouchaud)First-Passage and Extremes in Socio-Economic Systems (J Masoliver and J Perelló)Transport and the First-Passage Time Problem with Application to Cold Atoms in Optical Traps (E Barkai and D A Kessler)The Excursion Set Theory in Cosmology (M Maggiore and A Riottoo)Self-Organized Escape Processes of Linear Chains in Nonlinear Potentials (T Gross, D Hennig and L Schimansky-Geier)Efficient Monte Carlo Methods for Simulating Diffusion-Reaction Processes in Complex Systems (D S Grebenkov) Readership: Researchers in stochastic processes, statistical physics, and mathematical physics. Key Features:Comprehensive update of the classical book by Sidney RednerApplications to wide-ranging and active fields of researchWell-known authors in the fieldKeywords:First Passage;Stochastic Processes;Diffusion;Biophysics;Non-Equilibrium Statistical Mechanics;Complex Systems;Econophysics

This book offers a unified perspective on the study of complex systems with contributions written by leading scientists from various disciplines, including mathematics, physics, computer science, biology, economics and social science. It is written for researchers from a broad range of scientific fields with an interest in recent developments in complex systems.

This book aims to provide an overview of the special functions of fractional calculus and their applications in diffusion and random search processes. The book contains detailed calculations for various examples of anomalous diffusion, random search and stochastic resetting processes, which can be easily followed by the reader, who will be able to reproduce the obtained results. The book will be intended for advanced undergraduate and graduate students and researchers in physics, mathematics and other natural sciences due to the various examples which will be provided in the book.

This full-colour undergraduate textbook, based on a two semester course, presents the fundamentals of biological physics, introducing essential modern topics that include cells, polymers, polyelectrolytes, membranes, liquid crystals, phase transitions, self-assembly, photonics, fluid mechanics, motility, chemical kinetics, enzyme kinetics, systems biology, nerves, physiology, the senses, and the brain. The comprehensive coverage, featuring in-depth explanations of recent rapid developments, demonstrates this to be one of the most diverse of modern scientific disciplines. The Physics of Living Processes: A Mesoscopic Approach is comprised of five principal sections: • Building Blocks • Soft Condensed Matter Techniques in Biology • Experimental Techniques • Systems Biology • Spikes, Brains and the Senses The unique focus is predominantly on the mesoscale — structures on length scales between those of atoms and the macroscopic behaviour of whole organisms. The connections between molecules and their emergent biological phenomena provide a novel integrated perspective on biological physics, making this an important text across a variety of scientific disciplines including biophysics, physics, physical chemistry, chemical engineering and bioengineering. An extensive set of worked tutorial questions are included, which will equip the reader with a range of new physical tools to approach problems in the life sciences from medicine, pharmaceutical science and agriculture.

This book describes several techniques, first invented in physics for solving problems of heat and mass transfer, and applies them to various problems of mathematical finance defined in domains with moving boundaries. These problems include: (a) semi-closed form pricing of options in the one-factor models with time-dependent barriers (Bachelier, Hull-White, CIR, CEV); (b) analyzing an interconnected banking system in the structural credit risk model with default contagion; (c) finding first hitting time density for a reducible diffusion process; (d) describing the exercise boundary of American options; (e) calculating default boundary for the structured default problem; (f) deriving a semi-closed form solution for optimal mean-reverting trading strategies; to mention but some.The main methods used in this book are generalized integral transforms and heat potentials. To find a semi-closed form solution, we need to solve a linear or nonlinear Volterra equation of the second kind and then represent the option price as a one-dimensional integral. Our analysis shows that these methods are computationally more efficient than the corresponding finite-difference methods for the backward or forward Kolmogorov PDEs (partial differential equations) while providing better accuracy and stability.We extend a large number of known results by either providing solutions on complementary or extended domains where the solution is not known yet or modifying these techniques and applying them to new types of equations, such as the Bessel process. The book contains several novel results broadly applicable in physics, mathematics, and engineering.

The two-volume proceedings, LNCS 6927 and LNCS 6928, constitute the papers presented at the 13th International Conference on Computer Aided Systems Theory, EUROCAST 2011, held in February 2011 in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain. The total of 160 papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected for inclusion in the books. The contributions are organized in topical sections on concepts and formal tools; software applications; computation and simulation in modelling biological systems; intelligent information processing; heurist problem solving; computer aided systems optimization; model-based system design, simulation, and verification; computer vision and image processing; modelling and control of mechatronic systems; biomimetic software systems; computer-based methods for clinical and academic medicine; modeling and design of complex digital systems; mobile and autonomous transportation systems; traffic behaviour, modelling and optimization; mobile computing platforms and technologies; and engineering systems applications.