Asymptotics for the fastest among N stochastic particles: role of an extended initial distribution and an additional drift component

Abstract

We derive asymptotic formulas for the mean exit time of the fastest among N identical independently distributed Brownian particles to an absorbing boundary for various initial distributions (partially uniformly and exponentially distributed). Depending on the tail of the initial distribution, we report here a continuous algebraic decay law for , which differs from the classical Weibull or Gumbel results. We derive asymptotic formulas in dimension 1 and 2, for half-line and an interval that we compare with stochastic simulations. We also obtain formulas for an additive constant drift on the Brownian motion. Finally, we discuss some applications in cell biology where a molecular transduction pathway involves multiple steps and a long-tail initial distribution.