Non-universality in clustered ballistic annihilation

Abstract

In ballistic annihilation, infinitely many particles with randomly assigned velocities move across the real line and mutually annihilate upon contact. We introduce a variant with superimposed clusters of multiple stationary particles. Our main result is that the critical initial cluster density to ensure species survival depends on both the mean and variance of the cluster size. Our result contrasts with recent ballistic annihilation universality findings with respect to particle spacings. A corollary of our theorem resolves an open question for coalescing ballistic annihilation.