Voting models and semilinear parabolic equations
Abstract
We present probabilistic interpretations of solutions to semi-linear parabolic equations with polynomial nonlinearities in terms of the voting models on the genealogical trees of branching Brownian motion (BBM). These extend the connection between the Fisher-KPP equation and BBM discovered by McKean in~McK. In particular, we present ``random outcome'' and ``random threshold'' voting models that yield any polynomial nonlinearity f satisfying f(0)=f(1)=0 and a ``recursive up the tree'' model that allows to go beyond this restriction on f. We compute a few examples of particular interest; for example, we obtain a curious interpretation of the heat equation in terms of a nontrivial voting model and a ``group-based'' voting rule that leads to a probabilistic view of the pushmi-pullyu transition for a class of nonlinearities introduced by Ebert and van Saarloos.