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Temporal correlations of the running maximum of a Brownian trajectory

Abstract

We study the correlations between the maxima mm and MM of a Brownian motion (BM) on the time intervals [0,t1][0,t_1] and [0,t2][0,t_2], with t2>t1t_2>t_1. We determine exact forms of the distribution functions P(m,M)P(m,M) and P(G=Mm)P(G = M - m), and calculate the moments E{(Mm)k}\mathbb{E}\{\left(M - m\right)^k\} and the cross-moments E{mlMk}\mathbb{E}\{m^l M^k\} with arbitrary integers ll and kk. We show that correlations between mm and MM decay as t1/t2\sqrt{t_1/t_2} when t2/t1t_2/t_1 \to \infty, revealing strong memory effects in the statistics of the BM maxima. We also compute the Pearson correlation coefficient ρ(m,M)\rho(m,M), the power spectrum of MtM_t, and we discuss a possibility of extracting the ensemble-averaged diffusion coefficient in single-trajectory experiments using a single realization of the maximum process.

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