Rotational Brownian motion Rotational Brownian motion Rotational Brownian motion is the random change in the orientation of a polar molecule due to collisions with other molecules. It is an important element of theories of dielectric materials. The polarization of a dielectric material is a competition between torques due to the imposed electric field, which tend to align the molecules, and collisions, which tend to destroy the alignment. The theory of rotational Brownian motion allows one to calculate the net result of these two competing effects, and to predict how the permittivity of a dielectric material depends on the strength and frequency of the
Brownian excursion Groeneboom (1983) and Pitman (1983) give decompositions of Brownian motion formula_5 in terms of i.i.d Brownian excursions and the least concave majorant (or greatest convex minorant) of formula_5. For an introduction to Itô's general theory of Brownian excursions and the Itô Poisson process of excursions, see Revuz and Yor (1994), chapter XII. The Brownian excursion area arises in connection with the enumeration of connected graphs, many other problems in combinatorial theory; see e.g.,, and the limit distribution of the Betti numbers of certain varieties in cohomology theory. Takacs (1991a) shows that formula_19 has density where formula_21 are the zeros of