Scaling limit of the heavy-tailed ballistic deposition model with $p$-sticking

Abstract

Ballistic deposition is a classical model for interface growth in which unit blocks fall down vertically at random on the different sites of $\mathbb{Z}$ and stick to the interface at the first point of contact, causing it to grow. We consider an alternative version of this model in which the blocks have random heights which are i.i.d. with a heavy (right) tail, and where each block sticks to the interface at the first point of contact with probability $p$ (otherwise, it falls straight down until it lands on a block belonging to the interface). We study scaling limits of the resulting interface for the different values of $p$ and show that there is a phase transition as $p$ goes from $1$ to $0$.