Stochastic drift in discrete waves of nonlocally interacting particles.

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate a generalized model of N particles undergoing second-order nonlocal interactions on a lattice. Our results have applications across many research areas, including the modeling of migration, information dynamics, and Muller's ratchet-the irreversible accumulation of deleterious mutations in an evolving population. Strikingly, numerical simulations of the model are observed to deviate significantly from its mean-field approximation even for large population sizes. We show that the disagreement between deterministic and stochastic solutions stems from finite-size effects that change the propagation speed and cause the position of the wave to fluctuate. These effects are shown to decay anomalously as (lnN)^{-2} and (lnN)^{-3}, respectively-much slower than the usual N^{-1/2} factor. Our results suggest that the accumulation of deleterious mutations in a Muller's ratchet and the loss of awareness in a population may occur much faster than predicted by the corresponding deterministic models. The general applicability of our model suggests that this unexpected scaling could be important in a wide range of real-world applications.