Year: 2021
Type: preprint
Abstract: We consider a physical system comprising discrete massive particles on the real line whose trajectories interact via perfectly inelastic collision, also known as sticky particles. It turns out that polygons formed in a convex "cumulative momentum diagram" of the initial conditions allow us to easily predict how many particle clusters form as time $t\to\infty$. We explore an application of this to a unit mass system with $\pm 1$ velocities, which has ties to simple symmetric random walks and lattice path counting.
Source: arXiv (Cornell University)
Language: English
Subfield: Mathematical Physics
Field: Mathematics
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W3201050040