Screening effect due to heavy lower tails in one-dimensional parabolic Anderson model

We consider the large-time behavior of the solution $ucolon [0,infty)timesZto[0,infty)$ to the parabolic Anderson problem $partial_t u=kappaDelta u+xi u$ with initial data $u(0,cdot)=1$ and non-positive finite i.i.d. potentials $(xi(z))_{zinZ}$. Unlike in dimensions $dge2$, the almost-sure decay rate of $u(t,0)$ as $ttoinfty$ is not determined solely by the upper tails of $xi(0)$; too heavy lower tails of $xi(0)$ accelerate the decay. The interpretation is that sites $x$ with large negative $xi(x)$ hamper the mass flow and hence screen off the influence of more favorable regions of the potential. The phenomenon is unique to $d=1$. The result answers an open question from our previous study cite{BK00} of this model in general dimension.