Continuous-time random walks that alter environmental transport properties.

We consider continuous-time random walks (CTRWs) in which the walkers have a finite probability to alter the waiting-time and/or step-length transport properties of their environment, resulting in possibly transient anomalous diffusion. We refer to these CTRWs as transmogrifying continuous-time random walks (TCTRWs) to emphasize that they change the form of the transport properties of their environment, and in a possibly strange way. The particular case in which the CTRW waiting-time density has a finite probability to be permanently altered at a given site, following a visitation by a walker, is considered in detail. Master equations for the probability density function of transmogrifying random walkers are derived, and results are compared with Monte Carlo simulations. An interesting finding is that TCTRWs can generate transient subdiffusion or transient superdiffusion without invoking truncated or tempered power law densities for either the waiting times or the step lengths. The transient subdiffusion or transient superdiffusion arises in TCTRWs with Gaussian step-length densities and exponential waiting-time densities when the altered average waiting time is greater than or less than, respectively, the original average waiting time.