Random Recursive Trees and the Elephant Random Walk

Abstract

One class of random walks with infinite memory, so called elephant random walks, are simple models describing anomalous diffusion. We present a surprising connection between these models and bond percolation on random recursive trees. We use a coupling between the two models to translate results from elephant random walks to the percolation process. We calculate, besides other quantities, exact expressions for the first and the second moment of the root cluster size and of the number of nodes in child clusters of the first generation. We further introduce a new model, the skew elephant random walk and calculate the first and second moment of this process.