Brownian web is what we now call the Brownian web. Formally speaking, it is a collection of one-dimensional coalescing Brownian motions starting from every space-time point in formula_1. The fact that the Brownian web consists of an "uncountable" number of Brownian motions is what makes the construction highly non-trivial. Arratia gave a construction but was unable to prove convergence of coalescing random walks to a limiting object and characterize such a limiting object. Tóth and Werner in their study of the true self-repelling motion obtained many detailed properties of this limiting object and its dual but did not prove convergence of coalescing
Brownian ratchet Brownian ratchet In the philosophy of thermal and statistical physics, the Brownian ratchet or Feynman-Smoluchowski ratchet is a thought experiment about an apparent perpetual motion machine first analysed in 1912 by Polish physicist Marian Smoluchowski and popularised by American Nobel laureate physicist Richard Feynman in a physics lecture at the California Institute of Technology on May 11, 1962, during his Messenger Lectures series The Character of Physical Law in Cornell University in 1964 and in his text "The Feynman Lectures on Physics" as an illustration of the laws of thermodynamics. The simple machine, consisting of a tiny paddle wheel and