title: Occupancy of a single site by many random walkers
abstract: We consider an infinite number of noninteracting lattice random walkers with the goal of determining statistical properties of the time, out of a total time T, that a single site has been occupied by n random walkers. Initially the random walkers are assumed uniformly distributed on the lattice except for the target site at the origin, which is unoccupied. The random-walk model is taken to be a continuous-time random walk and the pausing-time density at the target site is allowed to differ from the pausing-time density at other sites. We calculate the dependence of the mean time of occupancy by n random walkers as a function of n and the observation time T. We also find the variance for the cumulative time during which the site is unoccupied. The large-T behavior of the variance differs according as the random walk is transient or recurrent. It is shown that the variance is proportional to T at large T in three or more dimensions, it is proportional to T(3/2) in one dimension and to T ln T in two dimensions.
authors.affiliation: Center for Information Technology, Bethesda, Maryland 20892, USA.
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Boguna
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Berezhkovskii
authors.initials: GH
authors.lastname: Weiss