Random walk on a population of random walkers

Abstract

We consider a population of $N$ labeled random walkers moving on a substrate, and an excitation jumping among the walkers upon contact. The label $\mathcal{X}(t)$ of the walker carrying the excitation at time $t$ can be viewed as a stochastic process, where the transition probabilities are a stochastic process themselves. Upon mapping onto two simpler processes, the quantities characterizing $\mathcal{X}(t)$ can be calculated in the limit of long times and low walkers density. The results are compared with numerical simulations. Several different topologies for the substrate underlying diffusion are considered.