Relativistic Weierstrass random walks.

The Weierstrass random walk is a paradigmatic Markov chain giving rise to a Lévy-type superdiffusive behavior. It is well known that special relativity prevents the arbitrarily high velocities necessary to establish a superdiffusive behavior in any process occurring in Minkowski spacetime, implying, in particular, that any relativistic Markov chain describing spacetime phenomena must be essentially Gaussian. Here, we introduce a simple relativistic extension of the Weierstrass random walk and show that there must exist a transition time t{c} delimiting two qualitative distinct dynamical regimes: the (nonrelativistic) superdiffusive Lévy flights, for t<t{c} , and the usual (relativistic) Gaussian diffusion, for t>t{c} . Implications of this crossover between different diffusion regimes are discussed for some explicit examples. The study of such an explicit and simple Markov chain can shed some light on several results obtained in much more involved contexts.