Random walks and Brownian motion: a method of computation for first-passage times and related quantities in confined geometries

Phys Rev E Stat Nonlin Soft Matter Phys. 2007 Feb;75(2 Pt 1):021111. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevE.75.021111. Epub 2007 Feb 13.

Abstract

In this paper we present a computation of the mean first-passage times both for a random walk in a discrete bounded lattice, between a starting site and a target site, and for a Brownian motion in a bounded domain, where the target is a sphere. In both cases, we also discuss the case of two targets, including splitting probabilities and conditional mean first-passage times. In addition, we study the higher-order moments and the full distribution of the first-passage time. These results significantly extend our earlier contribution [Condamin, Phys. Rev. Lett. 95, 260601 (2005)].