Extreme First-Passage Time of Many Interacting Particles

Abstract

Extreme first-passage events are broadly relevant to biological, chemical, and physical processes in which the first successful arrival determines the outcome. Existing theories are confined to noninteracting searchers. Interacting extreme-statistics problems are notoriously difficult because correlations destroy probability factorization. We establish a general framework for interacting extreme search. A no-go theorem shows that broad classes of bounded interactions cannot beat the $1/\ln N$ extreme timescale of $N$ independent Brownian searchers, and complementary upper bounds prove that this scale is exact for broad classes of repulsive interactions. We then identify two sharp mechanisms beyond the logarithmic class and derive a unified interaction-driven acceleration limit. In particular, deterministic pairwise interaction can at most reduce the extreme search time to order $1/N$, while stochastic pairwise forcing attains $1/(N\ln N)$. Our results separate acceleration due to statistical redundancy from that generated by coherent many-body transport or amplified fluctuations, deepening our understanding of interacting stochastic systems.