Random cover times using the Poisson cylinder process

Abstract

In this paper we deal with the classical problem of random cover times. We investigate the distribution of the time it takes for a Poisson process of cylinders to cover a set $A\subset {\mathbb{R}}^d.$ This Poisson process of cylinders is invariant under rotations, reflections and translations, and in addition we add a time component so that cylinders are "raining from the sky" at unit rate. Our main results concerns the asymptotic of this cover time as the set $A$ grows. If the set $A$ is discrete and well separated, we show convergence of the cover time to a Gumbel distribution. If instead $A$ has positive box dimension (and satisfies a weak additional assumption), we find the correct rate of convergence.