Sharp benefit-to-cost rules for the evolution of cooperation on regular graphs

We study two of the simple rules on finite graphs under the death-birth updating and the imitation updating discovered by Ohtsuki, Hauert, Lieberman and Nowak [Nature 441 (2006) 502-505]. Each rule specifies a payoff-ratio cutoff point for the magnitude of fixation probabilities of the underlying evolutionary game between cooperators and defectors. We view the Markov chains associated with the two updating mechanisms as voter model perturbations. Then we present a first-order approximation for fixation probabilities of general voter model perturbations on finite graphs subject to small perturbation in terms of the voter model fixation probabilities. In the context of regular graphs, we obtain algebraically explicit first-order approximations for the fixation probabilities of cooperators distributed as certain uniform distributions. These approximations lead to a rigorous proof that both of the rules of Ohtsuki et al. are valid and are sharp.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/12-AAP849 the Annals of Applied Probability (http://www.imstat.org/aap/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Exact Pseudofermion Action for Monte Carlo Simulation of Domain-Wall Fermion

We present an exact pseudofermion action for hybrid Monte Carlo simulation (HMC) of one-flavor domain-wall fermion (DWF), with the effective 4-dimensional Dirac operator equal to the optimal rational approximation of the overlap-Dirac operator with kernel $H = c H_w (1 + d \gamma_5 H_w)^{-1}$, where $c$ and $d$ are constants. Using this exact pseudofermion action, we perform HMC of one-flavor QCD, and compare its characteristics with the widely used rational hybrid Monte Carlo algorithm (RHMC). Moreover, to demonstrate the practicality of the exact one-flavor algorithm (EOFA), we perform the first dynamical simulation of the (1+1)-flavors QCD with DWF.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figures, v2: Simulation of (1+1)-flavors QCD with DWF, and references added. To appear in Phys. Lett.

Smaller population size at the MRCA time for stationary branching processes

We present an elementary model of random size varying population given by a stationary continuous state branching process. For this model we compute the joint distribution of: the time to the most recent common ancestor, the size of the current population and the size of the population just before the most recent common ancestor (MRCA). In particular we show a natural mild bottleneck effect as the size of the population just before the MRCA is stochastically smaller than the size of the current population. We also compute the number of old families which corresponds to the number of individuals involved in the last coalescent event of the genealogical tree. By studying more precisely the genealogical structure of the population, we get asymptotics for the number of ancestors just before the current time. We give explicit computations in the case of the quadratic branching mechanism. In this case, the size of the population at the MRCA is, in mean, less by 1/3 than size of the current population size. We also provide in this case the fluctuations for the renormalized number of ancestors