Negative autocorrelations of disorder strongly suppress thermally activated particle motion in short-correlated quenched Gaussian disorder potentials

Path integrals for fractional Brownian motion and fractional Gaussian noise

Wiener's path integral plays a central role in the study of Brownian motion. Here we derive exact path-integral representations for the more general fractional Brownian motion (FBM) and for its time derivative process, fractional Gaussian noise (FGN). These paradigmatic non-Markovian stochastic processes, introduced by Kolmogorov, Mandelbrot, and van Ness, found numerous applications across the disciplines, ranging from anomalous diffusion in cellular environments to mathematical finance. Their exact path-integral representations were previously unknown. Our formalism exploits the Gaussianity of the FBM and FGN, relies on the theory of singular integral equations, and overcomes some technical difficulties by representing the action functional for the FBM in terms of the FGN for the subdiffusive FBM and in terms of the derivative of the FGN for the super-diffusive FBM. We also extend the formalism to include external forcing. The exact and explicit path-integral representations make inroads in the study of the FBM and FGN.

Geometrical optics of large deviations of fractional Brownian motion

It has been shown recently that the optimal fluctuation method-essentially geometrical optics-provides a valuable insight into large deviations of Brownian motion. Here we extend the geometrical optics formalism to two-sided, -∞<t<∞, fractional Brownian motion (fBm) on the line, which is "pushed" to a large deviation regime by imposed constraints. We test the formalism on three examples where exact solutions are available: the two- and three-point probability distributions of the fBm and the distribution of the area under the fBm on a specified time interval. Then we apply the formalism to several previously unsolved problems by evaluating large-deviation tails of the following distributions: (i) of the first-passage time, (ii) of the maximum of, and (iii) of the area under, fractional Brownian bridge and fractional Brownian excursion, and (iv) of the first-passage area distribution of the fBm. An intrinsic part of a geometrical optics calculation is determination of the optimal path-the most likely realization of the process which dominates the probability distribution of the conditioned process. Due to the non-Markovian nature of the fBm, the optimal paths of a fBm, subject to constraints on a finite interval 0<t≤T, involve both the past -∞<t<0 and the future T<t<∞.