We compute the posterior distributions of the initial population and parameter of binary branching processes, in the limit of a large number of generations. We compare this Bayesian procedure with a more naïve one, based on hitting times of some random walks. In both cases, central limit theorems are available, with explicit variances.
We study the exploration (or height) process of a continuous time non-binary Galton-Watson random tree, in the subcritical, critical and supercritical cases. Thus we consider the branching process in continuous time (Z_{t})_{t\geq 0}, which describes the number of offspring alive at time t. We then renormalize our branching process and exploration process, and take the weak limit as the size of the population tends to infinity. Finally we deduce a Ray-Knight representation.
In this article, we study branching random walks on graphs modeling division-mutation processes inspired by adaptive immunity. We apply the theory of expander graphs on mutation rules in evolutionary processes and obtain estimates for the cover times of the branching random walks. This analysis reveals an unexpected saturation phenomenon : increasing the mutation rate above a certain threshold does not enhance the speed of state-space exploration.
The occupation time of an age-dependent branching particle system in $\Rd$ is considered, where the initial population is a Poisson random field and the particles are subject to symmetric $α$-stable migration, critical binary branching and random lifetimes. Two regimes of lifetime distributions are considered: lifetimes with finite mean and lifetimes belonging to the normal domain of attraction of a $γ$-stable law, $γ\in(0,1)$. It is shown that in dimensions $d>αγ$ for the heavy-tailed lifetimes case, and $d>α$ for finite mean lifetimes, the occupation time proccess satisfies a strong law of l…
We establish an explicit rate of convergence for some systems of mean-field interacting diffusions with logistic binary branching towards the solutions of nonlinear evolution equations with non-local self-diffusion and logistic mass growth, shown to describe their large population limits in arXiv:1303.3939. The proof relies on a novel coupling argument for binary branching diffusions based on optimal transport, which allows us to sharply mimic the trajectory of the interacting binary branching population by certain system of independent particles with suitably distributed random space-time bir…
The binary branching Brownian motion in the boundary case is a particle system on the real line behaving as follows. It starts with a unique particle positioned at the origin at time $0$. The particle moves according to a Brownian motion with drift $μ= 2$ and diffusion coefficient $σ^2 = 2$, until an independent exponential time of parameter $1$. At that time, the particle dies giving birth to two children who then start independent copies of the same process from their birth place. It is well-known that in this system, the cloud of particles eventually drifts to $\infty$. The aim of this note…
In this article we establish the magnitude of fluctuations of the extreme particle in the model of binary branching Brownian motion with a single catalytic point at the origin.
We consider the model of branching Brownian motion with a single catalytic point at the origin and binary branching. We establish some fine results for the asymptotic behaviour of the numbers of particles travelling at different speeds and give an explicit characterisation of the spatial distribution of particles travelling at the critical speed.
We consider a branching Brownian motion in which binary fission takes place only when particles are at the origin at a rate β> 0 on the local time scale. We obtain results regarding the asymptotic behaviour of the number of particles above λt at time t, for λ> 0. As a corollary, we establish the almost sure asymptotic speed of the rightmost particle. We also prove a Strong Law of Large Numbers for this catalytic branching Brownian motion.
In this paper we establish spatial central limit theorems for a large class of supercritical branching Markov processes with general spatial-dependent branching mechanisms. These are generalizations of the spatial central limit theorems proved in [1], P. for branching OU processes with binary branching mechanisms. Compared with the results of [1], our central limit theorems are more satisfactory in the sense that the normal random variables in our theorems are non-degenerate.
We study the model of binary branching Brownian motion with spatially-inhomogeneous branching rate $βδ_0(\cdot)$, where $δ_0(\cdot)$ is the Dirac delta function and $β$ is some positive constant. We show that the distribution of the rightmost particle centred about $\fracβ{2}t$ converges to a mixture of Gumbel distributions according to a martingale limit. Our results form a natural extension to S. Lalley and T. Sellke [6] for the degenerate case of catalytic branching.
In this paper, we study the overlap distribution and Gibbs measure of the Branching Random Walk with Gaussian increments on a binary tree. We first prove that the Branching Random Walk is 1 step Replica Symmetry Breaking and give a precise form for its overlap distribution, verifying a prediction of Derrida and Spohn. We then prove that the Gibbs measure of this system satisfies the Ghirlanda-Guerra identities. As a consequence, the limiting Gibbs measure has Poisson-Dirichlet statistics. The main technical result is a proof that the overlap distribution for the Branching Random Walk is suppor…
Consider a discrete-time one-dimensional supercritical branching random walk. We study the probability that there exists an infinite ray in the branching random walk that always lies above the line of slope $γ-ε$, where $γ$ denotes the asymptotic speed of the right-most position in the branching random walk. Under mild general assumptions upon the distribution of the branching random walk, we prove that when $ε\to 0$, the probability in question decays like $\exp\{- {β+ o(1)\over ε^{1/2}}\}$, where $β$ is a positive constant depending on the distribution of the branching random walk. In the sp…
For a particular case of a branching random walk with lattice support, namely the Yule branching random walk, we prove that the distribution of the centred maximum oscillates around a distribution corresponding to a critical travelling wave in the following sense: there exist continuous functions $t \mapsto a_t$ and $x \mapsto \overlineϕ(x)$ such that: $$\lim_{t \rightarrow +\infty} \sup_{x \in \mathbb{R}} \vert \mathbb{P}(\overline{X}(t) \leq a_t +x )-\overlineϕ(x- \{ a_t +x\})\vert=0,$$ where $\{x\}=x-\lfloor x \rfloor$ and $\overline{X}(t)$ is the height of the Yule tree. We also shows that…
We consider a branching particle system consisting of particles moving according to the Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process in $\Rd$ and undergoing a binary, supercritical branching with a constant rate $λ>0$. This system is known to fulfil a law of large numbers (under exponential scaling). Recently the question of the corresponding central limit theorem has been addressed. It turns out that the normalization and form of the limit in the CLT fall into three qualitatively different regimes, depending on the relation between the branching intensity and the parameters of the Orstein-Uhlenbeck process. In…
In this paper we consider a branching particle system consisting of particles moving according to the Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process in R^d and undergoing a binary, supercritical branching with a constant rate λ>0. This system is known to fulfil a law of large numbers (under exponential scaling). In the paper we prove the corresponding central limit theorem. Moreover, in the second part of the paper we consider U-statistics of the system, for which, under mild assumptions, we prove a law of large numbers and a central limit theorem. The limits are expressed in terms of multiple stochastic integral…
At time 0, start a time-continuous binary branching process, where particles give birth to a single particle independently (at a possibly time-dependent rate) and die independently (at a possibly time-dependent and age-dependent rate). A particular case is the classical birth--death process. Stop this process at time $T>0$. It is known that the tree spanned by the $N$ tips alive at time $T$ of the tree thus obtained (called reduced tree or coalescent tree) is a coalescent point process (CPP), which basically means that the depths of interior nodes are iid. Now select each of the $N$ tips indep…
Consider a continuous-time binary branching process conditioned to have population size n at some time t, and with a chance p for recording each extinct individual in the process. Within the family tree of this process, we consider the smallest subtree containing the genealogy of the extant individuals together with the genealogy of the recorded extinct individuals. We introduce a novel representation of such subtrees in terms of a point-process, and provide asymptotic results on the distribution of this point-process as the number of extant individuals increases. We motivate the study within …
Generalized gamma distributions arise as limits in many settings involving random graphs, walks, trees, and branching processes. Peköz, Röllin, and Ross (2016, arXiv:1309.4183 [math.PR]) exploited characterizing distributional fixed point equations to obtain uniform error bounds for generalized gamma approximations using Stein's method. Here we show how monotone couplings arising with these fixed point equations can be used to obtain sharper tail bounds that, in many cases, outperform competing moment-based bounds and the uniform bounds obtainable with Stein's method. Applications are given to…
In the paper the rescaled occupation time fluctuation process of a certain empirical system is investigated. The system consists of particles evolving independently according to α-stable motion in R^d, α<d<2α. The particles split according to the binary critical branching law with intensity V>0. We study how the limit behaviour of the fluctuations of the occupation time depends on the \emph{initial particle configuration}. We obtain a functional central limit theorem for a vast class of infinitely divisible distributions. Our findings extend and put in a unified setting results which previousl…
We consider catalytic branching populations. They consist of a catalyst population evolving according to a critical binary branching process in continuous time with a constant branching rate and a reactant population with a branching rate proportional to the number of catalyst individuals alive. The reactant forms a process in random medium. We describe asymptotically the genealogy of catalytic branching populations coded as the induced forest of $\mathbb{R}$-trees using the many individuals--rapid branching continuum limit. The limiting continuum genealogical forests are then studied in detai…
We show that the centred occupation time process of the origin of a system of critical binary branching random walks in dimension $d\ge 3$, started off either from a Poisson field or in equilibrium, when suitably normalized, converges to a Brownian motion in $d\ge4$. In $d=3$, the limit process is a fractional Brownian motion with Hurst parameter 3/4 when starting in equilibrium, and a related Gaussian process when starting from a Poisson field. For (dependent) branching random walks with state dependent branching rate we obtain convergence in f.d.d. to the same limit process, and for $d=3$ al…
In this paper we consider a branching particle system consisting of particles moving according to the Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process in $\Rd$ and undergoing a binary, supercritical branching with a constant rate $λ>0$. This system is known to fulfil a law of large numbers (under exponential scaling). In the paper we prove the corresponding central limit theorem. The limit and the CLT normalisation fall into three qualitatively different classes. In, what we call, the small branching rate case the situation resembles the classical one. The weak limit is Gaussian and normalisation is the square root…
Let $W_{\infty}(β)$ be the limit of the Biggins martingale $W_n(β)$ associated to a supercritical branching random walk with mean number of offspring $m$. We prove a functional central limit theorem stating that as $n\to\infty$ the process $$ D_n(u):= m^{\frac 12 n} \left(W_{\infty}\left(\frac{u}{\sqrt n}\right) - W_{n}\left(\frac{u}{\sqrt n}\right) \right) $$ converges weakly, on a suitable space of analytic functions, to a Gaussian random analytic function with random variance. Using this result we prove central limit theorems for the total path length of random trees. In the setting of bina…
In a supercritical branching particle system, the trimmed tree consists of those particles which have descendants at all times. We develop this concept in the superprocess setting. For a class of continuous superprocesses with Feller underlying motion on compact spaces, we identify the trimmed tree, which turns out to be a binary splitting particle system with a new underlying motion that is a compensated h-transform of the old one. We show how trimmed trees may be estimated from above by embedded binary branching particle systems.
We study the convergence of the $M/G/1$ processor-sharing, queue length process in the heavy traffic regime, in the finite variance case. To do so, we combine results pertaining to Lévy processes, branching processes and queuing theory. These results yield the convergence of long excursions of the queue length processes, toward excursions obtained from those of some reflected Brownian motion with drift, after taking the image of their local time process by the Lamperti transformation. We also show, via excursion theoretic arguments, that this entails the convergence of the entire processes to …
We study self-similarity in random binary rooted trees. In a well-understood case of Galton-Watson trees, a distribution on a space of trees is said to be self-similar if it is invariant with respect to the operation of pruning, which cuts the tree leaves. This only happens for the critical Galton-Watson tree (a constant process progeny), which also exhibits other special symmetries. We extend the prune-invariance setup to arbitrary binary trees with edge lengths. In this general case the class of self-similar processes becomes much richer and covers a variety of practically important situatio…
We consider the branching random walk on the real line where the underlying motion is of a simple random walk and branching is at least binary and at most decaying exponentially in law. It is well known that the normalized empirical measure converges to the Gaussian distribution for typical sets A. We therefore analyze the probability that at step n the empirical distribution differs from the Gaussian distribution by a constant ε. We show that the decay is doubly exponential in either n or \sqrt{n}, depending on the set A and ε, and we find the leading coefficient in the top exponent. To the b…
We study the set of possible joint posterior belief distributions of a group of agents who share a common prior regarding a binary state, and who observe some information structure. For two agents we introduce a quantitative version of Aumann's Agreement Theorem, and show that it is equivalent to a characterization of feasible distributions due to Dawid et al. (1995). For any number of agents, we characterize feasible distributions in terms of a "no-trade" condition. We use these characterizations to study information structures with independent posteriors. We also study persuasion problems wi…
We consider a branching process with Poissonian immigration where individuals have inheritable types. At rate theta, new individuals singly enter the total population and start a new population which evolves like a supercritical, homogeneous, binary Crump-Mode-Jagers process: individuals have i.i.d. lifetimes durations (non necessarily exponential) during which they give birth independently at constant rate b. First, using spine decomposition, we relax previously known assumptions required for a.s. convergence of total population size. Then, we consider three models of structured populations: …
We calculate, for a branching random walk $X_n(l)$ to a leaf $l$ at depth $n$ on a binary tree, the positive integer moments of the random variable $\frac{1}{2^{n}}\sum_{l=1}^{2^n}e^{2βX_n(l)}$, for $β\in\mathbb{R}$. We obtain explicit formulae for the first few moments for finite $n$. In the limit $n\to\infty$, our expression coincides with recent conjectures and results concerning the moments of moments of characteristic polynomials of random unitary matrices, supporting the idea that these two problems, which both fall into the class of logarithmically correlated Gaussian random fields, are…
A generical formalism for the discussion of Brownian processes with non-constant particle number is developed, based on the observation that the phase space of heat possesses a product structure that can be encoded in a commutative unit ring. A single Brownian particle is discussed in a Hilbert module theory, with the underlying ring structure seen to be intimately linked to the non-differentiability of Brownian paths. Multi-particle systems with interactions are explicitly constructed using a Fock space approach. The resulting ring-valued quantum field theory is applied to binary branching Br…
Age dependent population dynamics are frequently modeled with generalizations of the classic McKendrick-von Foerster equation. These are deterministic systems, and a stochastic generalization was recently reported in [1,2]. Here we develop a fully stochastic theory for age-structured populations via quantum field theoretical Doi-Peliti techniques. This results in a path integral formulation where birth and death events correspond to cubic and quadratic interaction terms. This formalism allows us to efficiently recapitulate the results in [1,2], exemplifying the utility of Doi-Peliti methods. F…