Non-equilibrium stochastic dynamics in continuum: The free case

Abstract

We study the problem of identification of a proper state-space for the stochastic dynamics of free particles in continuum, with their possible birth and death. In this dynamics, the motion of each separate particle is described by a fixed Markov process $M$ on a Riemannian manifold $X$. The main problem arising here is a possible collapse of the system, in the sense that, though the initial configuration of particles is locally finite, there could exist a compact set in $X$ such that, with probability one, infinitely many particles will arrive at this set at some time $t>0$. We assume that $X$ has infinite volume and, for each $\alpha\ge1$, we consider the set $\Theta_\alpha$ of all infinite configurations in $X$ for which the number of particles in a compact set is bounded by a constant times the $\alpha$-th power of the volume of the set. We find quite general conditions on the process $M$ which guarantee that the corresponding infinite particle process can start at each configuration from $\Theta_\alpha$, will never leave $\Theta_\alpha$, and has cadlag (or, even, continuous) sample paths in the vague topology. We consider the following examples of applications of our results: Brownian motion on the configuration space, free Glauber dynamics on the configuration space (or a birth-and-death process in $X$), and free Kawasaki dynamics on the configuration space. We also show that if $X=\mathbb R^d$, then for a wide class of starting distributions, the (non-equilibrium) free Glauber dynamics is a scaling limit of (non-equilibrium) free Kawasaki dynamics.