Ballistic aggregation's stochastic differential approximation conjecture

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Let Xn\mathcal{X}_n be the horizontal coordinate of the ballistic aggregation process, let θ\theta be its parameter, and let WW be Brownian motion. Define

μ(θ)=cos⁡θ1−cos⁡θ,\mu(\theta)=\frac{\cos\theta}{1-\cos\theta}, σ(θ)=(θ2+θsin⁡(θ)cos⁡(θ))/21−cos⁡θ.\sigma(\theta)=\frac{\sqrt{\left(\theta^2+\theta\sin(\theta)\cos(\theta)\right)/2}}{1-\cos\theta}.

Stochastic differential approximation conjecture. The process Xn\mathcal{X}_n behaves like a continuous-time process XtX_t satisfying

dXt=σ(θ)t dWt+μ(θ)Xtt dt.dX_t=\frac{\sigma(\theta)}{t}\,dW_t+\frac{\mu(\theta)X_t}{t}\,dt.

This conjecture formalizes the self-organized critical scaling suggested by the asymptotic drift and variance calculations. The supplied text does not state whether this approximation has been proved or disproved.

References

Primary source

Krzysztof Burdzy, “Ballistic aggregation displays self-organized criticality”, arXiv:2508.08613 (2025).

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