AbstractConsider n nonintersecting Brownian particles on ℝ (Dyson Brownian motions), all starting from the origin at time t = 0 and forced to return to x = 0 at time t = 1. For large n, the average mean density of particles has its support, for each 0 < t < 1, on the interval ±√2nt(1 − t). The Airy process 𝒜(τ) is defined as the motion of these nonintersecting Brownian motions for large n but viewed from the curve 𝒞 : y = √2nt(1 − t) with an appropriate space‐time rescaling.Assume now a finite number r of these particles are forced to a different target point, say a = ρ0√n/2 > 0. Does it affect the Brownian fluctuations along the curve 𝒞 for large n? In this paper, we show that no new process appears as long as one considers points (y, t) ∈ 𝒞 such that 0 < t < (1 + ρ)−1, which is the t‐coordinate of the point of tangency of the tangent to the curve passing through (ρ0√n/2, 1). At this point the fluctuations obey a new statistics, which we call the Airy process with r outliers 𝒜(r)(τ) (in short, r‐Airy process). The log of the probability that at time τ the cloud does not exceed x is given by the Fredholm determinant of a new kernel (extending the Airy kernel), and it satisfies a nonlinear PDE in x and τ, from which the asymptotic behavior of the process can be deduced for τ → −∞. This kernel is closely related to one found by Baik, Ben Arous, and Péché in the context of multivariate statistics. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.