Sarah Penington

• University of Oxford

We study the Bolker–Pacala–Dieckmann–Law (BPDL) model of population dynamics in the regime of large population density. The BPDL model is a particle system in which particles reproduce, move randomly in space and compete with each other locally. We rigorously prove global survival as well as a shape theorem describing the asymptotic spread of the p...

We study the Bolker-Pacala-Dieckmann-Law (BPDL) model of population dynamics in the regime of large population density. The BPDL model is a particle system in which particles reproduce, move randomly in space, and compete with each other locally. We rigorously prove global survival as well as a shape theorem describing the asymptotic spread of the...

The evolutionary mechanism that drove the establishment of self-incompatibility in early sexual eukaryotes is still a debated topic. While a number of competing hypotheses have been proposed, many have not received detailed theoretical attention. In particular, the hypothesis that self-incompatibility increases the benefits of genetic recombination...

The $N$-particle branching random walk is a discrete time branching particle system with selection. We have $N$ particles located on the real line at all times. At every time step each particle is replaced by two offspring, and each offspring particle makes a jump of non-negative size from its parent's location, independently from the other jumps,...

We study a free boundary problem for a parabolic partial differential equation in which the solution is coupled to the moving boundary through an integral constraint. The problem arises as the hydrodynamic limit of an interacting particle system involving branching Brownian motion with selection, the so-called Brownian bees model which is studied i...

We study a model of selection acting on a diploid population (one in which each individual carries two copies of each gene) living in one spatial dimension. We suppose a particular gene appears in two forms (alleles) $A$ and $a$, and that individuals carrying $AA$ have a higher fitness than $aa$ individuals, while $Aa$ individuals have a lower fitn...

The Brownian bees model is a branching particle system with spatial selection. It is a system of $N$ particles which move as independent Brownian motions in $\mathbb{R}^d$ and independently branch at rate 1, and, crucially, at each branching event, the particle which is the furthest away from the origin is removed to keep the population size consta...

We study a free boundary problem for a parabolic partial differential equation in which the solution is coupled to the moving boundary through an integral constraint. The problem arises as the hydrodynamic limit of an interacting particle system involving branching Brownian motion with selection, the so-called Brownian bees model which is studied i...

Motivated by the study of branching particle systems with selection, we establish global existence for the solution of the free boundary problem when the initial condition is non-increasing with as and as . We construct the solution as the limit of a sequence , where each un is the solution of a Fisher–KPP equation with the same initial condition,...

We establish global existence for the solution $(u,\mu)$ of the free boundary problem \[ \begin{cases} \partial_t u =\partial^2_{x} u +u & \text{for $t>0$ and $x>\mu_t$,} u(x,t)=1 &\text{for $t>0$ and $x \leq \mu_t$}, \partial_x u(\mu_t,t)=0 & \text{for $t>0$}, u(x,0)=v(x) &\text{for $x\in \mathbb{R}$}, \end{cases} \] when the initial condition $v:...

In this work we study a nonlocal version of the Fisher‐KPP equation, and its relation to a branching Brownian motion with decay of mass as introduced in Addario‐Berry and Penington (2015) , i.e., a particle system consisting of a standard branching Brownian motion (BBM) with a competitive interaction between nearby particles. Particles in the BBM...

In this work we study a non-local version of the Fisher-KPP equation, \begin{equation*} \begin{cases} \frac{\partial u}{\partial t}=\tfrac{1}{2}\Delta u +u (1- \phi \ast u), \quad t>0, \quad x\in \mathbb{R}, u(0,x)=u_0(x), \quad x\in \mathbb{R} \end{cases} \end{equation*} and its relation to $\textit{branching Brownian motion with decay of mass}$ a...

We augment standard branching Brownian motion by adding a competitive interaction between nearby particles. Informally, when particles are in competition, the local resources are insufficient to cover the energetic cost of motion, so the particles' masses decay. In standard BBM, we may define the front displacement at time t as the greatest distanc...

We consider the Fisher-KPP equation with a non-local interaction term. Hamel and Ryzhik showed that in solutions of this equation, the front location at a large time $t$ is $\sqrt 2 t +o(t)$. We study the asymptotics of the second order term in the front location. If the interaction kernel $\phi(x)$ decays sufficiently fast as $x\rightarrow \infty$...

We provide a probabilistic proof of a well known connection between a special case of the Allen-Cahn equation and mean curvature flow. We then prove a corresponding result for scaling limits of the spatial $\Lambda$-Fleming-Viot process with selection, in which the selection mechanism is chosen to model what are known in population genetics as hybr...

We study the evolution of gene frequencies in a population living in $\mathbb{R}^d$, modelled by the spatial Lambda Fleming-Viot process with natural selection (Barton, Etheridge and V\'eber, 2010 and Etheridge, V\'eber and Yu, 2014). We suppose that the population is divided into two genetic types, $a$ and $A$, and consider the proportion of the p...

We ask the question "when will natural selection on a gene in a spatially structured population cause a detectable trace in the patterns of genetic variation observed in the contemporary population?". We focus on the situation in which 'neighbourhood size', that is the effective local population density, is small. The genealogy relating individuals...

It is well known that stabilization of the resistive wall mode (RWM) may allow fusion power to be significantly increased for a given magnetic field in advanced tokamak operation. The principle of stabilization of the RWM by rotation has been established both experimentally and theoretically. Recent experimental results have indicated stabilization...