The ballistic annihilation threshold is 1/4

Abstract

We consider a system of annihilating particles where particles start from the points of a Poisson process on the line, move at constant i.i.d. speeds symmetrically distributed in {-1,0,+1} and annihilate upon collision. We prove that particles with speed 0 vanish almost surely if and only if their initial density is smaller than or equal to 1/4, and give an explicit formula for the probability of survival of a stationary particle, which is in accordance with the predictions of [Droz et al. 1995]. The present proof relies essentially on an identity proved in a recent paper by J. Haslegrave.