## The Annals of Probability

### Coalescing Brownian flows: A new approach

#### Abstract

The coalescing Brownian flow on $\mathbb{R}$ is a process which was introduced by Arratia [Coalescing Brownian motions on the line (1979) Univ. Wisconsin, Madison] and Tóth and Werner [Probab. Theory Related Fields 111 (1998) 375–452], and which formally corresponds to starting coalescing Brownian motions from every space–time point. We provide a new state space and topology for this process and obtain an invariance principle for coalescing random walks. This result holds under a finite variance assumption and is thus optimal. In previous works by Fontes et al. [Ann. Probab. 32 (2004) 2857–2883], Newman et al. [Electron. J. Probab. 10 (2005) 21–60], the topology and state-space required a moment of order $3-\varepsilon$ for this convergence to hold. The proof relies crucially on recent work of Schramm and Smirnov on scaling limits of critical percolation in the plane. Our approach is sufficiently simple that we can handle substantially more complicated coalescing flows with little extra work—in particular similar results are obtained in the case of coalescing Brownian motions on the Sierpinski gasket. This is the first such result where the limiting paths do not enjoy the noncrossing property.

#### Article information

Source
Ann. Probab., Volume 43, Number 6 (2015), 3177-3215.

Dates
Received: November 2013
Revised: July 2014
First available in Project Euclid: 11 December 2015

Permanent link to this document
https://projecteuclid.org/euclid.aop/1449843628

Digital Object Identifier
doi:10.1214/14-AOP957

Mathematical Reviews number (MathSciNet)
MR3433579

Zentralblatt MATH identifier
1345.60111

#### Citation

Berestycki, Nathanaël; Garban, Christophe; Sen, Arnab. Coalescing Brownian flows: A new approach. Ann. Probab. 43 (2015), no. 6, 3177--3215. doi:10.1214/14-AOP957. https://projecteuclid.org/euclid.aop/1449843628

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