Trapping planar Brownian motion in a non circular trap

Abstract

Brownian motion in the plane in the presence of a "trap" at which motion is stopped is studied. If the trap $T$ is a connected compact set, it is shown that the probability for planar Brownian motion to hit this set before a given time $t$ is well approximated even at short times by the probability that Brownian motion hits a disk of radius $r_T$ equal to the conformal radius of the trap $T$.