Brownian motion and Random Walk above Quenched Random Wall

Abstract

We study the persistence exponent for the first passage time of a random walk below the trajectory of another random walk. More precisely, let $\{B_n\}$ and $\{W_n\}$ be two centered, weakly dependent random walks. We establish that $\mathbb{P}(\forall_{n\leq N} B_n \geq W_n|W) = N^{-γ+ o(1)}$ for a non-random $γ\geq 1/2$. In the classical setting, $W_n \equiv 0$, it is well-known that $γ= 1/2$. We prove that for any non-trivial $W$ one has $γ>1/2$ and the exponent $γ$ depends only on $\text{Var}(B_1)/\text{Var}(W_1)$. Our result holds also in the continuous setting, when $B$ and $W$ are independent and possibly perturbed Brownian motions or Ornstein-Uhlenbeck processes. In the latter case the probability decays at exponential rate.