Rotational Brownian motion (astronomy) that the rotation axis of the binary is oriented at angle θ at time "t". The evolution equation for "F" is formula_17 If <Δξ>, "a", ρ and σ are constant in time, this becomes formula_18 where μ = cos θ and τ is the time in units of the relaxation time "t", where formula_19 The solution to this equation states that the expectation value of μ decays with time as formula_20 Hence, "t" is the time constant for the binary's orientation to be randomized by torques from field stars. Rotational Brownian motion was first discussed in the context of binary
Brownian bridge Brownian bridge A Brownian bridge is a continuous-time stochastic process "B"("t") whose probability distribution is the conditional probability distribution of a Wiener process "W"("t") (a mathematical model of Brownian motion) subject to the condition (when standardized) that "W"(T) = 0, so that the process is pinned at the origin at both "t=0" and "t=T". More precisely: The expected value of the bridge is zero, with variance formula_2, implying that the most uncertainty is in the middle of the bridge, with zero uncertainty at the nodes. The covariance of "B"("s") and "B"("t") is "s"(T − "t")/T if "s" < "t". The