Mortal random walks on a family of treelike regular fractals with a deep trap

Abstract

Due to the ubiquitous occurrence of evanescence in many physical, chemical and biological scenarios, mortal random walks that incorporate evanescence explicitly have drawn more and more attention. It has been a hot topic to study mortal random walks on distinct network models. In this paper, we study mortal random walks on T fractal and a family of treelike regular fractals with a trap located at central node (i.e., innermost node). First, with self-similar setting composed of T fractal, initial position of the walker and location of trap, the total trapping probability of the mortal walker reduces to a function of walker’s single-step survival parameter [Formula: see text]. In more detail, the total trapping probability is expressed by the [Formula: see text]th iteration of map (scaling function) of [Formula: see text]. Based on the map, the analytical expression of total trapping probability’s dominant behavior, the mean time to trapping (MFPT) and temporal factor are obtained, which are related to random walk dimension. Last, we extend the analysis to a family of treelike regular fractals. On them, the total trapping probability is still expressed as the [Formula: see text]th iteration of the map scaling [Formula: see text]. Accordingly, dominant behavior of total trapping probability, MFPT and temporal factor are determined analytically. Both analytical results obtained on T fractal and more general treelike regular fractals show that the mean time to trapping and desired random walk dimension can be obtained by tuning the survival probability parameter [Formula: see text]. In summary, the work advances the understanding of mortal random walks on more general deterministic networks.