Statistical Mechanics of the Chinese Restaurant Process: lack of self-averaging, anomalous finite-size effects and condensation

Bruno Bassetti, Mina Zarei, Marco Cosentino Lagomarsino, Ginestra Bianconi

Published 2009-05-28, updated 2009-12-11Version 3

The Pitman-Yor, or Chinese Restaurant Process, is a stochastic process that generates distributions following a power-law with exponents lower than two, as found in a numerous physical, biological, technological and social systems. We discuss its rich behavior with the tools and viewpoint of statistical mechanics. We show that this process invariably gives rise to a condensation, i.e. a distribution dominated by a finite number of classes. We also evaluate thoroughly the finite-size effects, finding that the lack of stationary state and self-averaging of the process creates realization-dependent cutoffs and behavior of the distributions with no equivalent in other statistical mechanical models.