We investigate a neutral model for speciation and extinction, the constant rate birth-death process. The process is conditioned to have $n$ extant species today, we look at the tree distribution of the reconstructed trees-- i.e. the trees without the extinct species. Whereas the tree shape distribution is well-known and actually the same as under the pure birth process, no analytic results for the speciation times were known. We provide the distribution for the speciation times and calculate the expectations analytically. This characterizes the reconstructed trees completely. We will show how the results can be used to date phylogenies.
The constant rate birth--death process is a popular null model for speciation and extinction. If one removes extinct and non-sampled lineages, this process induces `reconstructed trees' which describe the relationship between extant lineages. We derive the probability density of the length of a randomly chosen pendant edge in a reconstructed tree. For the special case of a pure-birth process with complete sampling, we also provide the probability density of the length of an interior edge, of the length of an edge descending from the root, and of the diversity (which is the sum of all edge leng…
Conditioning Markov processes to avoid a set is a classical problem that has been studied in many settings. In the present article we study the question if a Levy process can be conditioned to avoid an interval and, if so, the path behavior of the conditioned process. For Levy processes with finite second moments we show that conditioning is possible and identify the conditioned process as an h-transform of the original killed process. The h-transform is explicit in terms of successive overshoot distributions and is used to prove that the conditioned process diverges to plus infinity and minus…
This paper aims to establish a central limit theorem for Markov processes conditioned not to be absorbed under a very general assumption on quasi-stationarity for the underlying process. To do so, a central limit theorem has been established for ergodic Markov processes. The conditional central limit theorem is then obtained by applying the central limit theorem to the $Q$-process.
In the recent article Döring et al. [4] the authors conditioned a stable process with two-sided jumps to avoid an interval. As usual the strategy was to find an invariant function for the process killed on entering the interval and to show that the corresponding h-transformed process is indeed the process conditioned to avoid an interval in a meaningful way. In the present article we consider the case of a completely asymmetric stable process. It turns out that the invariant function found in [4] does not exist or is not invariant but nonetheless, we will characterize the conditioned process a…
A multitype Dawson-Watanabe process is conditioned, in subcritical and critical cases, on non-extinction in the remote future. On every finite time interval, its distribution is absolutely continuous with respect to the law of the unconditioned process. A martingale problem characterization is also given. Several results on the long time behavior of the conditioned mass process|the conditioned multitype Feller branching diffusion are then proved. The general case is first considered, where the mutation matrix which models the interaction between the types, is irreducible. Several two-type mode…
This paper provides a multivariate extension of Bertoin's pathwise construction of a Lévy process conditioned to stay positive/negative. Thus obtained processes conditioned to stay in half-spaces are closely related to the original process on a compact time interval seen from its directional extremal points. In the case of a correlated Brownian motion the law of the conditioned process is obtained by a linear transformation of a standard Brownian motion and an independent Bessel-3 process. Further motivation is provided by a limit theorem corresponding to zooming in on a Lévy process with a Br…
We investigate some asymptotic properties of general Markov processes conditioned not to be absorbed by moving boundaries. We first give general criteria involving an exponential convergence towards the Q-process, that is the law of the considered Markov process conditioned never to reach the moving boundaries. This exponential convergence allows us to state the existence and uniqueness of quasi-ergodic distribution considering either boundaries moving periodically or stabilizing boundaries. We also state the existence and uniqueness of quasi-limit distribution when absorbing boundaries stabil…
We construct the law of Lévy processes conditioned to stay positive under general hypotheses. We obtain a Williams type path decomposition at the minimum of these processes. This result is then applied to prove the weak convergence of the law of Lévy processes conditioned to stay positive as their initial state tends to 0. We describe an absolute continuity relationship between the limit law and the measure of the excursions away from 0 of the underlying Lévy process reflected at its minimum. Then, when the Lévy process creeps upwards, we study the lower tail at 0 of the law of the height this…
It is well known that a simple, supercritical Bienaymé-Galton-Watson process turns into a subcritical such process, if conditioned to die out. We prove that the corresponding holds true for general, multi-type branching, where child-bearing may occur at different ages, life span may depend upon reproduction, and the whole course of events is thus affected by conditioning upon extinction.
In \cite{hZ09}, Zessin constructed the so-called Pólya sum process via partial integration technique. This process shares some important properties with the Poisson process such as complete randomness and infinite divisibility. This work discusses H-sufficient statistics for the Pólya sum process as it was done for the Poisson process in \cite{hZ76}.
We study the pathwise description of a (sub-)critical continuous-state branching process (CSBP) conditioned to be never extinct, as the solution to a stochastic differential equation driven by Brownian motion and Poisson point measures. The interest of our approach, which relies on applying Girsanov theorem on the SDE that describes the unconditioned CSBP, is that it points out an explicit mechanism to build the immigration term appearing in the conditioned process, by randomly selecting jumps of the original one. These techniques should also be useful to represent more general h-transforms of…
Reinforced processes are known to provide a stochastic representation for the quasi-stationary distribution of a given killed Markov process - describing the killed Markov process at fixed time instants. In this paper we shall adapt the construction to provide a pathwise description. We also obtain a stochastic approximation for the quasi-limiting distributions of reducible killed Markov processes as a corollary.
Consider the continuous-time Markov Branching Process. In critical case we consider a situation when the generating function of intensity of transformation of particles has the infinite second moment, but its tail regularly varies in sense of Karamata. First we discuss limit properties of transition functions of the process. We prove local limit theorems and investigate ergodic properties of the process. Further we investigate limiting probability function conditioned to be never extinct. Hereupon we obtain a new stochastic population process as a continuous-time Markov chain called the Markov…
We consider Kallenberg's hypothesis on the characteristic function of a Lévy process and show that it allows the construction of weakly continuous bridges of the Lévy process conditioned to stay positive. We therefore provide a notion of normalized excursions Lévy processes above their cumulative minimum. Our main contribution is the construction of a continuous version of the transition density of the Lévy process conditioned to stay positive by using the weakly continuous bridges of the Lévy process itself. For this, we rely on a method due to Hunt which had only been shown to provide upper …
In this paper, we consider time-inhomogeneous branching processes and time-inhomogeneous birth-and-death processes, in which the offspring distribution and birth and death rates (respectively) vary in time. A classical result of branching processes states that in the critical regime, a process conditioned on non-extinction and normalized will converge in distribution to a standard exponential. In a paper of Jagers, time-inhomogeneous branching processes are shown to exhibit this convergence as well. In this paper, the hypotheses of Jagers' result are relaxed, further hypotheses are presented f…
In this work, we study asymptotics of the genealogy of Galton--Watson processes conditioned on the total progeny. We consider a fixed, aperiodic and critical offspring distribution such that the rescaled Galton--Watson processes converges to a continuous-state branching process (CSBP) with a stable branching mechanism of index $α\in (1, 2]$. We code the genealogy by two different processes: the contour process and the height process that Le Gall and Le Jan recently introduced \cite{LGLJ1, LGLJ1}. We show that the rescaled height process of the corresponding Galton--Watson family tree, with one…
It is well known that upward conditioned Brownian motion is a three-dimensional Bessel process, and that a downward conditioned Bessel process is a Brownian motion. We give a simple proof for this result, which generalizes to any continuous local martingale and clarifies the role of finite versus infinite time in this setting. As a consequence, we can describe the law of regular diffusions that are conditioned upward or downward.
We give a realization of the stable Lévy forest of a given size conditioned by its mass from the path of the unconditioned forest. Then, we prove an invariance principle for this conditioned forest by considering $k$ independent Galton-Watson trees whose offspring distribution is in the domain of attraction of any stable law conditioned on their total progeny to be equal to $n$. We prove that when $n$ and $k$ tend towards $+\infty$, under suitable rescaling, the associated coding random walk, the contour and height processes converge in law on the Skorokhod space respectively towards the "firs…
The first aim is to construct generalizations of Polya type point process by applying a branching mechanism to these point processes. Conditions are given under which these point processes satisfy an integration by parts formula. Furthermore we compute their Palm kernels, which turn out to be superpositions of different point processes. Secondly we identify all point processes whose local characteristics agree with these of a fixed branching of a Polya type point process as mixtures of branchings of Polya type point process and show that in this case also they are characterized by an integrati…
We consider a renewal process that is conditioned on the number of events in a fixed time horizon. We prove that a centered and scaled version of this process converges to a Brownian bridge, as the number of events grows large, which relies on first establishing a functional strong law of large numbers result to determine the centering. These results are consistent with the asymptotic behavior of a conditioned Poisson process. We prove the limit theorems over triangular arrays of exchangeable random variables, obtained by conditionning a sequence of independent and identically distributed rene…
Conditioning Markov processes to avoid a domain is a classical problem that has been studied in many settings. Ingredients for standard arguments involve the leading order tail asymptotics of the distribution of the first hitting time of the domain of interest and its relation to an underlying harmonic function. In the present article we condition stable processes to avoid intervals. The required tail asymptotics in the stable setting for $α\geq 1$ go back to classical work of Blumenthal et al. and Port from the 1960s. For $α<1$, we appeal to recent results centred around the so-called deep fa…
In recent work, Chaumont et al. [9] showed that is possible to condition a stable process with index $α \in (1,2)$ to avoid the origin. Specifically, they describe a new Markov process which is the Doob h-transform of a stable process and which arises from a limiting procedure in which the stable process is conditioned to have avoided the origin at later and later times. A stable process is a particular example of a real self-similar Markov process (rssMp) and we develop the idea of such conditionings further to the class of rssMp. Under appropriate conditions, we show that the specific case o…
We study Markov processes conditioned so that their local time must grow slower than a prescribed function. Building upon recent work on Brownian motion with constrained local time in [5] and [33], we study transience and recurrence for a broad class of Markov processes. In order to understand the distribution of the local time, we determine the distribution of a non-decreasing Lévy process (the inverse local time) conditioned to remain above a given level which varies in time. We study a time-dependent region, in contrast to previous works in which a process is conditioned to remain in a fixe…
Suppose that $(X_t)_{t \ge 0}$ is a one-dimensional Brownian motion with negative drift $-μ$. It is possible to make sense of conditioning this process to be in the state $0$ at an independent exponential random time and if we kill the conditioned process at the exponential time the resulting process is Markov. If we let the rate parameter of the random time go to $0$, then the limit of the killed Markov process evolves like $X$ conditioned to hit $0$, after which time it behaves as $X$ killed at the last time $X$ visits $0$. Equivalently, the limit process has the dynamics of the killed "bang…
We generalize the notion of Gaussian bridges by conditioning Gaussian processes given that certain linear functionals of the sample paths vanish. We show the equivalence of the laws of the unconditioned and the conditioned process and by an application of Girsanov's theorem, we show that the conditioned process follows a stochastic differential equation (SDE) whenever the unconditioned process does. In the Markovian case, we are able to determine the coefficients in the SDE of the conditioned process explicitly. Our main example is Brownian motion on $[0,1]$ pinned down in 0 at time 1 and cond…
The purpose of this paper is to construct the law of a Lévy process conditioned to avoid zero, under mild technicals conditions, two of them being that the point zero is regular for itself and the Lévy process is not a compound Poisson process. Two constructions are proposed, the first lies on the method of $h$-transformation, which requires a deep study of the associated excessive function; while in the second it is obtained by conditioning the underlying Lévy process to avoid zero up to an independent exponential time whose parameter tends to $0.$ The former approach generalizes some of the …
This article studies the quasi-stationary behaviour of population processes with unbounded absorption rate, including one-dimensional birth and death processes with catastrophes and multi-dimensional birth and death processes, modeling biological populations in interaction. To handle this situation, we develop original non-linear Lyapunov criteria. We obtain the exponential convergence in total variation of the conditional distributions to a unique quasi-stationary distribution, uniformly with respect to the initial distribution. Our results cover all one-dimensional birth and death processes …
In the present work, we consider spectrally positive Lévy processes $(X_t,t\geq0)$ not drifting to $+\infty$ and we are interested in conditioning these processes to reach arbitrarily large heights (in the sense of the height process associated with $X$) before hitting 0. This way we obtain a new conditioning of Lévy processes to stay positive. The (honest) law $\pfl$ of this conditioned process is defined as a Doob $h$-transform via a martingale. For Lévy processes with infinite variation paths, this martingale is $(\int\tilde\rt(\mathrm{d}z)e^{αz}+I_t)\2{t\leq T_0}$ for some $α$ and where $(…
Diffusion processes are fundamental in modelling stochastic dynamics in natural sciences. Recently, simulating such processes on complicated geometries has found applications for example in biology, where toroidal data arises naturally when studying the backbone of protein sequences, creating a demand for efficient sampling methods. In this paper, we propose a method for simulating diffusions on the flat torus, conditioned on hitting a terminal point after a fixed time, by considering a diffusion process in R 2 which we project onto the torus. We contribute a convergence result for this diffus…
Our principal aim is to observe the Markov discrete-time process of population growth with long-living trajectory. First we study asymptotical decay of generating function of Galton-Watson process for all cases as the Basic Lemma. Afterwards we get a Differential analogue of the Basic Lemma. This Lemma plays main role in our discussions throughout the paper. Hereupon we improve and supplement classical results concerning Galton-Watson process. Further we investigate properties of the population process so called Q-process. In particular we obtain a joint limit law of Q-process and its total st…
We consider the asymmetric simple exclusion process (ASEP) on a finite lattice with periodic boundary conditions, conditioned to carry an atypically low current. For an infinite discrete set of currents, parametrized by the driving strength $s_K$, $K \geq 1$, we prove duality relations which arise from the quantum algebra $U_q[\mathfrak{gl}(2)]$ symmetry of the generator of the process with reflecting boundary conditions. Using these duality relations we prove on microscopic level a travelling-wave property of the conditioned process for a family of shock-antishock measures for $N>K$ particles…
By killing a stable Lévy process when it leaves the positive half-line, or by conditioning it to stay positive, or by conditioning it to hit 0 continuously, we obtain three different positive self-similar Markov processes which illustrate the three classes described by Lamperti \cite{La}. For each of these processes, we compute explicitly the infinitesimal generator from which we deduce the characteristics of the underlying Lévy process in the Lamperti representation. The proof of this result bears on the behaviour at time 0 of stable Lévy processes before their first passage time across level…
Consider a stable Lévy process $X=(X_t,t\geq 0)$ and let $T_x$, for $x>0$, denote the first passage time of $X$ above the level $x$. In this work, we give an alternative proof of the absolute continuity of the law of $T_x$ and we obtain a new expression for its density function. Our approach is elementary and provides a new insight into the study of the law of $T_x$. The random variable $T_x^0$, defined as the limit of $T_x$ when the corresponding overshoot tends to $0$, plays an important role in obtaining these results. Moreover, we establish a relation between the random variable $T_x^0$ an…
This article studies the quasi-stationary behaviour of multidimensional birth and death processes, modeling the interaction between several species, absorbed when one of the coordinates hits 0. We study models where the absorption rate is not uniformly bounded, contrary to most of the previous works. To handle this natural situation, we develop original Lyapunov function arguments that might apply in other situations with unbounded killing rates. We obtain the exponential convergence in total variation of the conditional distributions to a unique stationary distribution, uniformly with respect…
We consider a strong Markov process with killing and prove an approximation method for the distribution of the process conditioned not to be killed when it is observed. The method is based on a Fleming-Viot type particle system with rebirths, whose particles evolve as independent copies of the original strong Markov process and jump onto each others instead of being killed. Our only assumption is that the number of rebirths of the Fleming-Viot type system doesn't explode in finite time almost surely and that the survival probability of the original process remains positive in finite time. The …
We consider a general method for the approximation of the distribution of a process conditioned to not hit a given set. Existing methods are based on particle system that are failable, in the sense that, in many situations , they are not well defined after a given random time. We present a method based on a new particle system which is always well define. Moreover , we provide sufficient conditions ensuring that the particle method converges uniformly in time. We also show that this method provides an approximation method for the quasi-stationary distribution of Markov processes. Our results a…
We give a simple new proof of a theorem of Duquesne, stating that the properly rescaled contour function of a critical aperiodic Galton-Watson tree, whose offspring distribution is in the domain of attraction of a stable law of index $θ\in (1,2]$, conditioned on having total progeny $n$, converges in the functional sense to the normalized excursion of the continuous-time height function of a strictly stable spectrally positive Lévy process of index $θ$. To this end, we generalize an idea of Le Gall which consists in using an absolute continuity relation between the conditional probability of h…
The dynamics of a population exhibiting exponential growth can be modelled as a birth-death process, which naturally captures the stochastic variation in population size over time. In this article, we consider a supercritical birth-death process, started at a random time in the past, and conditioned to have n sampled individuals at the present. The genealogy of individuals sampled at the present time is then described by the reversed reconstructed process (RRP), which traces the ancestry of the sample backwards from the present. We show that a simple, analytic, time rescaling of the RRP provid…
We obtain the posterior distribution of a random process conditioned on observing the empirical frequencies of a finite sample path. We find under a rather broad assumption on the "dependence structure" of the process, {\em c.f.} independence or Markovian, the posterior marginal distribution of the process at a given time index can be identified as certain empirical distribution computed from the observed empirical frequencies of the sample path. We show that in both cases of discrete-valued i.i.d. sequence and finite Markov chain, a certain "conditional symmetry" given by the observation of t…
Let $(S_n)_n$ be the random process on $\mathbb R$ driven by the product of i.i.d. non-negative random matrices and $τ$ its exit time from $]0, +\infty[$. By using the adapted strategy initiated by D. Denisov and V. Wachtel, we obtain an asymptotic estimate and bounds of the probability that the process $(S_k)_k$ remains non negative up to time $n$ and simultaneously belongs to some compact set $[b, b+\ell ]\subset \mathbb R^{*+}$ at time $n$.
We consider the biased random walk on a critical Galton-Watson tree conditioned to survive, and confirm that this model with trapping belongs to the same universality class as certain one-dimensional trapping models with slowly-varying tails. Indeed, in each of these two settings, we establish closely-related functional limit theorems involving an extremal process and also demonstrate extremal aging occurs.
In this paper, for $α\in (1, 2}$ we show that the $α$-stable continuous-state branching process and the associated process conditioned never to become extinct are positive self-similar Markov processes. Understanding the interaction of the Lamperti transformation for continuous-state branching processes and the Lamperti transformation for positive self-similar Markov processes permits accessto a number of explicit results concerning the paths of stable-continuous branching processes and its conditioned version.
We consider a random walk on a multidimensional integer lattice with random bounds on local times, conditioned on the event that it hits a high level before its death. We introduce an auxiliary "core" process that has a regenerative structure and plays a key role in our analysis. We obtain a number of representations for the distribution of the random walk in terms of the similar distribution of the "core" process. Based on that, we prove a number of limiting results by letting the high level to tend to infinity. In particular, we generalise results for a simple symmetric one-dimensional rando…
The first aim of the present note is to quantify the speed of convergence of a conditioned process toward its Q-process under suitable assumptions on the quasi-stationary distribution of the process. Conversely, we prove that, if a conditioned process converges uniformly to a conservative Markov process which is itself ergodic, then it admits a unique quasi-stationary distribution and converges toward it exponentially fast, uniformly in its initial distribution. As an application, we provide a conditional ergodic theorem.
This paper concerns a scaling limit of a one-dimensional random walk $S^x_n$ started from $x$ on the integer lattice conditioned to avoid a non-empty finite set $A$, the random walk being assumed to be irreducible and have zero mean. Suppose the variance $σ^2$ of the increment law is finite. Given positive constants $b$, $c$ and $T$ we consider the scaled process $S^{b_N}_{[tN]}/σ\sqrt N$, $0\leq t \leq T$ started from a point $b_N \approx b\sqrt N$ conditioned to arrive at another point $\approx -c\sqrt N$ at $t=T$ and avoid $A$ in between and discuss the functional limit of it as $N\to\infty…
Drmota and Gittenberger (1997) proved a conjecture due to Aldous (1991) on the height profile of a Galton-Watson tree with an offspring distribution of finite variance, conditioned on a total size of $n$ individuals. The conjecture states that in distribution its shape, more precisely its scaled height profile coincides asymptotically with the local time process of a Brownian excursion of duration 1. We give a proof of the result, which extends to the case of an infinite variance offspring distribution. This requires a different strategy, since in the infinite variance case there is no longer …
We consider the diffusion approximation of branching processes in random environment (BPREs). This diffusion approximation is similar to and mathematically more tractable than BPREs. We obtain the exact asymptotic behavior of the survival probability. As in the case of BPREs, there is a phase transition in the subcritical regime due to different survival opportunities. In addition, we characterize the process conditioned to never go extinct and establish a backbone construction. In the strongly subcritical regime, mean offspring numbers are increased but still subcritical in the process condit…
We consider a Brownian tree consisting of a collection of one-dimensional Brownian paths started from the origin, whose genealogical structure is given by the Continuum Random Tree (CRT). This Brownian tree may be generated from the Brownian snake driven by a normalized Brownian excursion, and thus yields a convenient representation of the so-called Integrated Super-Brownian Excursion (ISE), which can be viewed as the uniform probability measure on the tree of paths. We discuss different approaches that lead to the definition of the Brownian tree conditioned to stay on the positive half-line. …
In this paper, we prove a result of equivalence in law between a diffusion conditioned with respect to partial observations and an auxiliary process. By partial observations we mean coordinates (or linear transformation) of the process at a finite collection of deterministic times. Apart from the theoritical interest, this result allows to simulate the conditioned diffusion through Monte Carlo's method, using the fact that the auxiliary process is easy to simulate.
