Particle Systems with Stochastic Passing

Abstract

We study a system of particles moving on a line in the same direction. Passing is allowed and when a fast particle overtakes a slow particle, it acquires a new velocity drawn from a distribution P_0(v), while the slow particle remains unaffected. We show that the system reaches a steady state if P_0(v) vanishes at its lower cutoff; otherwise, the system evolves indefinitely.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure