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IOP Publishing, Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical, 38(47), p. 385004

DOI: 10.1088/1751-8113/47/38/385004

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Probability distribution of the number of distinct sites visited by a random walk on the finite-size fully-connected lattice

Journal article published in 2014 by Loïc Turban ORCID
This paper is available in a repository.
This paper is available in a repository.

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Abstract

The probability distribution of the number $s$ of distinct sites visited up to time $t$ by a random walk on the fully-connected lattice with $N$ sites is first obtained by solving the eigenvalue problem associated with the discrete master equation. Then, using generating function techniques, we compute the joint probability distribution of $s$ and $r$, where $r$ is the number of sites visited only once up to time $t$. Mean values, variances and covariance are deduced from the generating functions and their finite-size-scaling behaviour is studied. Introducing properly centered and scaled variables $u$ and $v$ for $r$ and $s$ and working in the scaling limit ($t\to∞$, $N\to∞$ with $w=t/N$ fixed) the joint probability density of $u$ and $v$ is shown to be a bivariate Gaussian density. It follows that the fluctuations of $r$ and $s$ around their mean values in a finite-size system are Gaussian in the scaling limit. The same type of finite-size scaling is expected to hold on periodic lattices above the critical dimension $d_{\rm c}=2$.