title: Scaling law in target-hunting processes.
abstract: We study a hunting process for a target, in which the hunter tracks the goal by smelling odors it emits. The odor intensity is supposed to decrease with the diffusion distance. The Monte Carlo experiment is carried out on a two-dimensional square lattice. Having no idea of the location of the target, the hunter determines its moves only by random attempts in each direction. By sorting the searching time in each simulation and introducing a variable x to reflect the sequence of searching times, we obtain a curve with a wide plateau, indicating the most probable time of successfully finding the target. The simulations reveal a scaling law for the searching time versus the distance to the position of the target. The scaling exponent depends on the sensitivity of the hunter. Our model may be a prototype in studying such searching processes as various food-foraging behaviors of wild animals.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China.
authors.forename: Shi-Jie
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Yang