Abstract
Real landscapes exhibit long-range height-height correlations, which are
quantified by the Hurst exponent H. We give evidence that for negative
H, in spite of the long-range nature of correlations, the statistics of
the accessible perimeter of isoheight lines is compatible with
Schramm-Loewner evolution curves and therefore can be mapped to random
walks, their fractal dimension determining the diffusion constant. Analytic results are recovered for H = -1 and H = 0 and a conjecture is
proposed for the values in between. By contrast, for positive H, we find
that the random walk is not Markovian but strongly correlated in time.
Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
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