Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-lj6df Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-17T15:01:53.674Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Ehrenfest urn models

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 July 2016

Samuel Karlin
Affiliation:
Stanford University
James McGregor
Affiliation:
Stanford University

Extract

In the Ehrenfest model with continuous time one considers two urns and N balls distributed in the urns. The system is said to be in state i if there are i balls in urn I, N − i balls in urn II. Events occur at random times and the time intervals T between successive events are independent random variables all with the same negative exponential distribution

When an event occurs a ball is chosen at random (each of the N balls has probability 1/N to be chosen), removed from its urn, and then placed in urn I with probability p, in urn II with probability q = 1 − p, (0 < p < 1).

Type
Research Papers
Copyright
Copyright © Applied Probability Trust 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

[1] Bellman, R. and Harris, T. E. (1951) Recurrence times for the Ehrenfest model. Pacific J. Math. 1, 184188.Google Scholar
[2] Feller, W. (1951) Two singular diffusion problems. Ann. Math. 54, 173182.Google Scholar
[3] Friedman, B. (1949) A simple urn model. Comm. Pure Appl. Math. 2, 5970.Google Scholar
[4] Kac, M. (1947) Random walk and the theory of Brownian motion. Amer. Math. Monthly 54, 369391.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
[5] Karlin, Samuel and Mcgregor, James (1964) On some stochastic models in genetics. Stochastic Models in Medicine and Biology, 245279, The University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
[6] Karlin, Samuel and Mcgregor, James (1959) A characterization of birth and death processes. Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 45, 375379.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
[7] Karlin, Samuel and Mcgregor, James (1958) Linear growth, birth and death processes. J. Math. Mech. 7, 643662.Google Scholar
[8] Karlin, Samuel and Mcgregor, James (1958) Many server queueing processes with Poisson input and exponential service times. Pacific J. Math. 8, 87118.Google Scholar
[9] Karlin, Samuel and Mcgregor, James (1959) Random Walks. Illinois J. Math. 3, 6681.Google Scholar
[10] Karlin, Samuel and Mcgregor, James (1961) The Hahn polynomials, formulas and an application. Scripta Math. 26, 3346.Google Scholar
[11] Karlin, Samuel and Mcgregor, James, On a multiallelic gene frequency stochastic process. (to be published).Google Scholar
[12] Kemperman, H. H. B. (1961) The Passage Problem for a Stationary Markov Chain. University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
[13] Siegert, Arnold J. F. (1950) On the approach to statistical equilibrium. Phys. Rev. 76, 17081714.Google Scholar
[14] Szegö, G. (1939) Orthogonal Polynomials. Amer. Math. Soc. Colloquium Publ. 23, 378393.Google Scholar