Random walks in nonuniform environments with local dynamic interactions

We consider a class of lattice random walk models in which the random walker is initially confined to a finite connected set of allowed sites but has the opportunity to enlarge this set by colliding with its boundaries, each such collision having a given probability of breaking through. The model is motivated by an analogy to cell motility in tissue, where motile cells have the ability to remodel extracellular matrix, but is presented here as a generic model for stochastic erosion. For the one-dimensional case, we report some exact analytic results, some mean-field type analytic approximate results and simulations. We compute exactly the mean and variance of the time taken to enlarge the interval from a single site to a given size. The problem of determining the statistics of the interval length and the walker's position at a given time is more difficult and we report several interesting observations from simulations. Our simulations include the case in which the initial interval length is random and the case in which the initial state of the lattice is a random mixture of allowed and forbidden sites, with the walker placed at random on an allowed site. To illustrate the extension of these ideas to higher-dimensional systems, we consider the erosion of the simple cubic lattice commencing from a single site and report simulations of measures of cluster size and shape and the mean-square displacement of the walker