Self-reinforcing directionality generates Lévy walks without the power-law assumption

Abstract

We introduce a persistent random walk model with finite velocity and self-reinforcing directionality, which explains how exponentially distributed runs self-organize into truncated Lévy walks observed in active intracellular transport by Chen et. al. [\textit{Nat. mat.}, 2015]. We derive the non-homogeneous in space and time, hyperbolic PDE for the probability density function (PDF) of particle position. This PDF exhibits a bimodal density (aggregation phenomena) in the superdiffusive regime, which is not observed in classical linear hyperbolic and Lévy walk models. We find the exact solutions for the first and second moments and criteria for the transition to superdiffusion.