Stochastic processes with competing reinforcements

Abstract

We introduce a simple but powerful technique to study processes driven by two or more reinforcement mechanisms in competition. We apply our method to two types of models: to non conservative zero range processes on finite graphs, and to multi-particle random walks with positive and negative reinforcement on the edges. The results hold for a broad class of reinforcement functions, including those with superlinear growth. Our technique consists in a comparison of the original processes with suitable reference models. To implement the comparison we estimate a Radon-Nikodym derivative on a carefully chosen set of trajectories. Our results describe the almost surely long time behaviour of the processes. We also prove a phase transition depending on the strength of the reinforcement functions.

The stated phase transition in the first version was wrong and now it is corrected. We are grateful to the anonymous referees for their valuable input