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 special case of i.i.d. Bernoulli$(p)$ random variables (with $0<p<{1\over 2}$) assigned on a rooted binary tree, this answers an open question of Robin Pemantle.
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.
We give an alternative proof of a result by N. Gantert, Y. Hu and Z. Shi on the asymptotic behavior of the survival probability of the branching random walk killed below a linear boundary, in the special case of deterministic binary branching and bounded random walk steps. Connections with the Brunet-Derrida theory of stochastic fronts are discussed.
Consider a branching random walk on the real line with a killing barrier at zero: starting from a nonnegative point, particles reproduce and move independently, but are killed when they touch the negative half-line. The population of the killed branching random walk dies out almost surely in both critical and subcritical cases, where by subcritical case we mean that the rightmost particle of the branching random walk without killing has a negative speed, and by critical case, when this speed is zero. We investigate the total progeny of the killed branching random walk and give their precise ta…
We consider a branching random walk on $\mathbb{R}$ with a killing barrier at zero. At criticality, the process becomes eventually extinct, and the total progeny $Z$ is therefore finite. We show that the tail distribution of $Z$ displays a typical behaviour in $(n\ln^2(n))^{-1}$, which confirms the prediction of Addario-Berry and Broutin.
We consider a branching random walk for which the maximum position of a particle in the n'th generation, M_n, has zero speed on the linear scale: M_n/n --> 0 as n --> infinity. We further remove ("kill") any particle whose displacement is negative, together with its entire descendence. The size $Z$ of the set of un-killed particles is almost surely finite. In this paper, we confirm a conjecture of Aldous that Exp[Z] < infinity while Exp[Z log Z]=infinity. The proofs rely on precise large deviations estimates and ballot theorem-style results for the sample paths of random walks.
For a continuous-time Bienaymé-Galton-Watson process, $X$, with immigration and culling, $0$ as an absorbing state, call $X^q$ the process that results from killing $X$ at rate $q\in (0,\infty)$, followed by stopping it on extinction or explosion. Then an explicit identification of the relevant harmonic functions of $X^q$ allows to determine the Laplace transforms (at argument $q$) of the first passage times downwards and of the explosion time for $X$. Strictly speaking, this is accomplished only when the killing rate $q$ is sufficiently large (but always when the branching mechanism is not su…
We obtain sharp asymptotic estimates for hitting probabilities of a critical branching Brownian motion in one dimension with killing at 0 We also obtain sharp asymptotic formulas for the tail probabilities of the number of particles killed at 0. In the special case of double-or-nothing branching, we give exact formulas for both the hitting probabilities, in terms of elliptic functions, and the distribution of the number of killed particles.
We consider a one-dimensional simple random walk surviving among a field of static soft traps : each time it meets a trap the walk is killed with probability 1--e --$β$ , where $β$ is a positive and fixed parameter. The positions of the traps are sampled independently from the walk and according to a renewal process. The increments between consecutive traps, or gaps, are assumed to have a power-law decaying tail with exponent $γ$ > 0. We prove convergence in law for the properly rescaled logarithm of the quenched survival probability as time goes to infinity. The normalization exponent is $γ$/…
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 study weak and strong survival for branching random walks on multigraphs. We prove that, for a large class of multigraphs, weak survival is related to a geometrical parameter of the multigraph and that the existence of a pure weak phase is equivalent to nonamenability. Finally we study weak and strong critical behaviors of the branching random walk.
We study the asymptotic behavior of the probability of non extinction of a weakly subcritical multitype branching process in iid random environments. Under suitable assumptions, the survival probability is of order of $ρ^n n ^{-3/2}$ for some $ρ\in (0, 1)$ to specify.
We derive asymptotics for the quenched probability that a critical branching Brownian motion killed at a small rate in Poissonian obstacles exits a large domain. Results are formulated in terms of the solution to a semilinear partial differential equation with singular boundary conditions. The proofs depend on a quenched homogenization theorem for branching Brownian motion among mild obstacles.
We study survival of nearest-neighbour branching random walks in random environment (BRWRE) on ${\mathbb Z}$. A priori there are three different regimes of survival: global survival, local survival, and strong local survival. We show that local and strong local survival regimes coincide for BRWRE and that they can be characterized with the spectral radius of the first moment matrix of the process. These results are generalizations of the classification of BRWRE in recurrent and transient regimes. Our main result is a characterization of global survival that is given in terms of Lyapunov expone…
We consider a branching Brownian motion with linear drift in which particles are killed on exiting the interval (0,K) and study the evolution of the process on the event of survival as the width of the interval shrinks to the critical value at which survival is no longer possible. We combine spine techniques and a backbone decomposition to obtain exact asymptotics for the near-critical survival probability. This allows us to deduce the existence of a quasi-stationary limit result for the process conditioned on survival which reveals that the backbone thins down to a spine as we approach critic…
We consider a slightly subcritical branching Brownian motion with absorption, where particles move as Brownian motions with drift $-\sqrt{2+2\varepsilon}$, undergo dyadic fission at rate $1$, and are killed when they reach the origin. We obtain a Yaglom type asymptotic result, showing that the long run expected number of particles conditioned on survival grows exponentially as $1/\sqrt{\varepsilon}$ as the process approaches criticality.
We consider a stochastic model for species evolution. A new species is born at rate lambda and a species dies at rate mu. A random number, sampled from a given distribution F, is associated with each new species at the time of birth. Every time there is a death event, the species that is killed is the one with the smallest fitness. We consider the (random) survival time of a species with a given fitness f. We show that the survival time distribution depends crucially on whether f<f_c, f=f_c or f>f_c where f_c is a critical fitness that is computed explicitly.
The aim of this paper is the study of the strong local survival property for discrete-time and continuous-time branching random walks. We study this property by means of an infinite dimensional generating function G and a maximum principle which, we prove, is satisfied by every fixed point of G. We give results about the existence of a strong local survival regime and we prove that, unlike local and global survival, in continuous time, strong local survival is not a monotone property in the general case (though it is monotone if the branching random walk is quasi transitive). We provide an exa…
In this paper, we show that a Galton-Watson tree conditioned to have a fixed number of particles in generation $n$ converges in distribution as $n\rightarrow\infty$, and with this tool we study the span and gap statistics of a branching random walk on such trees, which is the discrete version of Ramola, Majumdar and Schehr 2015, generalized to arbitrary offspring and displacement distributions with moment constraints.
We consider a particular Branching Random Walk in Random Environment (BRWRE) on $\sN_0$ started with one particle at the origin. Particles reproduce according to an offspring distribution (which depends on the location) and move either one step to the right (with a probability in $(0,1]$ which also depends on the location) or stay in the same place. We give criteria for local and global survival and show that global survival is equivalent to exponential growth of the moments. Further, on the event of survival the number of particles grows almost surely exponentially fast with the same growth r…
This review paper presents the known results on the asymptotics of the survival probability and limit theorems conditioned on survival of critical and subcritical branching processes in IID random environments. The key assumptions of the family of population models in question are: non-overlapping generations, independent reproduction of particles within a generation, independent reproduction laws between generations. This is a biologically important generalization of the time inhomogeneous branching processes. The assumption of IID (independent and identically distributed) random environments…
It is a common practice to describe branching random walks in terms of birth, death and walk of particles, which makes it easier to use them in different applications. The main results obtained for the models of symmetric continuous-time heavy-tailed branching random walks on a multidimensional lattice. We will be mainly interested in studying the problems related to the limiting behavior of branching random walks such as the existence of phase transitions under change of various parameters, the properties of the limiting distribution and the survival probability of a particle population. Emph…
We study the asymptotic behaviour of the survival probability of a multi-type branching processes in random environment. The class of processes we consider corresponds, in the one-dimensional situation, to the intermediately subcritical case. We show under rather general assumptions on the form of the offspring generating functions of particles that the probability of survival up to generation $n$ of the process initiated at moment zero by a single particle of any type is of order $λ^{n}n^{-1/2}$ for large $n,$ where $λ\in (0,1)$ is a constant specified by the Lyapunov exponent of the mean mat…
We consider branching Brownian motion on the real line with absorption at zero, in which particles move according to independent Brownian motions with the critical drift of $-\sqrt{2}$. Kesten (1978) showed that almost surely this process eventually dies out. Here we obtain upper and lower bounds on the probability that the process survives until some large time $t$. These bounds improve upon results of Kesten (1978), and partially confirm nonrigorous predictions of Derrida and Simon (2007).
Using the annealed approach we investigate the asymptotic behavior of the survival probability of a critical multitype branching process evolving in i.i.d. random environment. We show under rather general assumptions on the form of the offspring generating functions of particles that the probability of survival up to generation $n$ of the process initiated at moment zero by a single particle of type $i$ is equivalent to $c_{i}n^{-1/2}$ for large $n,$ where $c_{i}$ is a positive constant. Earlier such asymptotic representation was known only for the case of the fractional linear offspring gener…
Let $(Z_n)_{n\geqslant 0}$ be a branching process in a random environment defined by a Markov chain $(X_n)_{n\geqslant 0}$ with values in a finite state space $\mathbb X$ starting at $X_0=i \in\mathbb X$. We extend from the i.i.d. environment to the Markovian one the classical classification of the branching processes into critical and strongly, intermediate and weakly subcritical states. In all these cases, we study the asymptotic behaviour of the probability that $Z_n>0$ as $n\to+\infty$.
We consider a general discrete-time branching random walk on a countable set X. We relate local, strong local and global survival with suitable inequalities involving the first-moment matrix M of the process. In particular we prove that, while the local behavior is characterized by M, the global behavior cannot be completely described in terms of properties involving M alone. Moreover we show that locally surviving branching random walks can be approximated by sequences of spatially confined and stochastically dominated branching random walks which eventually survive locally if the (possibly f…
We study a branching Brownian motion $Z$ with a generic branching law, evolving in $\mathbb{R}^d$, where a field of Poissonian traps is present. Each trap is a ball with constant radius. We focus on two cases of Poissonian fields: a uniform field and a radially decaying field. Using classical results on the convergence of the speed of branching Brownian motion, we establish precise results on the population size of $Z$, given that it avoids the trap field, while staying alive up to time $t$. The results are stated so that each gives an 'optimal survival strategy' for $Z$. As corollaries of the…
We consider a branching random walk with an absorbing barrier, where the step of the associated one-dimensional random walk is in the domain of attraction of an $α$-stable law with $1<α<2$. We shall prove that there is a barrier $an^{\frac{1}{1+α}}$ and a critical value $a_α$ such that if $a<a_α$, then the process dies; if $a>a_α$, then the process survives. The results generalize previous results in literature for the case $α=2$.
A critical branching process $\left\{ Z_{k},k=0,1,2,...\right\} $ in a random environment is considered. A conditional functional limit theorem for the properly scaled process $\left\{ \log Z_{pu},0\leq u<\infty \right\} $ is established under the assumptions $Z_{n}>0$ and $p\ll n$. It is shown that the limiting process is a Levy process conditioned to stay nonnegative. The proof of this result is based on a limit theorem describing the distribution of the initial part of the trajectories of a driftless random walk conditioned to stay nonnegative.
The Fleming-Viot particle system consists of $N$ identical particles diffusing in a domain $U \subset \mathbb{R}^d$. Whenever a particle hits the boundary $\partial U$, that particle jumps onto another particle in the interior. It is known that this system provides a particle representation for both the Quasi-Stationary Distribution (QSD) and the distribution conditioned on survival for a given diffusion killed at the boundary of its domain. We extend these results to the case of McKean-Vlasov dynamics. We prove that the law conditioned on survival of a given McKean-Vlasov process killed on th…
Consider a system of particles performing branching Brownian motion with negative drift $μ= \sqrt{2 - ε}$ and killed upon hitting zero. Initially there is one particle at $x>0$. Kesten showed that the process survives with positive probability if and only if $ε>0$. Here we are interested in the asymptotics as $\eps\to 0$ of the survival probability $Q_μ(x)$. It is proved that if $L= π/\sqrtε$ then for all $x \in \R$, $\lim_{ε\to 0} Q_μ(L+x) = θ(x) \in (0,1)$ exists and is a travelling wave solution of the Fisher-KPP equation. Furthermore, we obtain sharp asymptotics of the survival probability…
We consider a critical branching process in an i.i.d. random environment, in which one immigrant arrives at each generation. We are interested in the event $\mathcal{A}_i(n)$ that all individuals alive at time $n$ are offspring of the immigrant which joined the population at time $i$. We study the asymptotic probability of this event when $n$ is large and $i$ follows different asymptotics which may be related to $n$ ($i$ fixed, close to $n$, or going to infinity but far from $n$). In order to do so, we establish some conditional limit theorems for random walks, which are of independent interes…
The reproduction speed of a continuous-time branching random walk is proportional to a positive parameter $λ$. There is a threshold for $λ$, which is called $λ_w$, that separates almost sure global extinction from global survival. Analogously, there exists another threshold $λ_s$ below which any site is visited almost surely a finite number of times (i.e.~local extinction) while above it there is a positive probability of visiting every site infinitely many times. The local critical parameter $λ_s$ is completely understood and can be computed as a function of the reproduction rates. On the oth…
We first study a model, introduced recently in \cite{ES}, of a critical branching random walk in an IID random environment on the $d$-dimensional integer lattice. The walker performs critical (0-2) branching at a lattice point if and only if there is no `obstacle' placed there. The obstacles appear at each site with probability $p\in [0,1)$ independently of each other. We also consider a similar model, where the offspring distribution is subcritical. Let $S_n$ be the event of survival up to time $n$. We show that on a set of full $\mathbb P_p$-measure, as $n\to\infty$, (i) Critical case: P^ω(S…
We propose two models of the evolution of a pair of competing populations. Both are lattice based. The first is a compromise between fully spatial models, which do not appear amenable to analytic results, and interacting particle system models, which do not, at present, incorporate all of the competitive strategies that a population might adopt. The second is a simplification of the first, in which competition is only supposed to act within lattice sites and the total population size within each lattice point is a constant. In a special case, this second model is dual to a branching annihilati…
Let $Z_{n}$ be the number of individuals in a subcritical BPRE evolving in the environment generated by iid probability distributions. Let $X$ be the logarithm of the expected offspring size per individual given the environment. Assuming that the density of $X$ has the form $$p_{X}(x)=x^{-β-1}l_{0}(x)e^{-ρx}$$ for some $β>2,$ a slowly varying function $l_{0}(x)$ and $ρ\in \left( 0,1\right),$ we find the asymptotic survival probability and prove a Yaglom type conditional limit theorem for the process. The survival probability decreases exponentially with an additional polynomial term related to…
We consider a subcritical branching process in an i.i.d. random environment, in which one immigrant arrives at each generation. We consider the event $% \mathcal{A}_{i}(n)$ that all individuals alive at time $n$ are offspring of the immigrant which joined the population at time $i$ and investigate the asymptotic probability of this extreme event when $n\to\infty$ and $i$ is either fixed, or the difference $n-i$ is fixed, or $\min(i,n-i)\to\infty.$ To deduce the desired asymptotics we establish some limit theorems for random walks conditioned to be nonnegative or negative.
Let $η^*_n$ denote the maximum, at time $n$, of a nonlattice one-dimensional branching random walk $η_n$ possessing (enough) exponential moments. In a seminal paper, Aidekon demonstrated convergence of $η^*_n$ in law, after recentering, and gave a representation of the limit. We give here a shorter proof of this convergence by employing reasoning motivated by Bramson, Ding and Zeitouni. Instead of spine methods and a careful analysis of the renewal measure for killed random walks, our approach employs a modified version of the second moment method that may be of independent interest.
We study the asymptotic behaviour of the survival probability of a multitype branching process in random environment. The class of processes we consider here corresponds, in the one-dimensional situation, to the strongly subcritical case. We also prove a conditional limit theorem describing the distribution of the number of particles in the process given its survival for a long time.
We consider a branching random walk in a random space-time environment of disasters where each particle is killed when meeting a disaster. This extends the model of the "random walk in a disastrous random environment" introduced by [15]. We obtain a criterion for positive survival probability, see Theorem 1. The proofs for the subcritical and the supercritical cases follow standard arguments, which involve moment methods and a comparison with an embedded branching process with i.i.d. offspring distributions. The proof of almost sure extinction in the critical case is more difficult and uses th…
Place an obstacle with probability $1-p$ independently at each vertex of $\mathbb Z^d$ and consider a simple symmetric random walk that is killed upon hitting one of the obstacles. For $d \geq 2$ and $p$ strictly above the critical threshold for site percolation, we condition on the environment such that the origin is contained in an infinite connected component free of obstacles. It has previously been shown that with high probability, the random walk conditioned on survival up to time $n$ will be localized in a ball of volume asymptotically $d\log_{1/p}n$. In this work, we prove that this ba…
We study a branching random walk on $\r$ with an absorbing barrier. The position of the barrier depends on the generation. In each generation, only the individuals born below the barrier survive and reproduce. Given a reproduction law, Biggins et al. \cite{BLSW91} determined whether a linear barrier allows the process to survive. In this paper, we refine their result: in the boundary case in which the speed of the barrier matches the speed of the minimal position of a particle in a given generation, we add a second order term $a n^{1/3}$ to the position of the barrier for the $n^\mathrm{th}$ g…
We study a discrete time spatial branching system on $\mathbb{Z}^d$ with logistic-type local regulation at each deme depending on a weighted average of the population in neighboring demes. We show that the system survives for all time with positive probability if the competition term is small enough. For a restricted set of parameter values, we also obtain uniqueness of the nontrivial equilibrium and complete convergence, as well as long-term coexistence in a related two-type model. Along the way we classify the equilibria and their domain of attraction for the corresponding deterministic coup…
