Recent progress in coalescent theory

Recovering the Brownian Coalescent Point Process from the Kingman Coalescent by Conditional Sampling

We consider a continuous population whose dynamics is described by the standard stationary Fleming-Viot process, so that the genealogy of $n$ uniformly sampled individuals is distributed as the Kingman $n$-coalescent. In this note, we study some genealogical properties of this population when the sample is conditioned to fall entirely into a subpopulation with most recent common ancestor (MRCA) shorter than $\varepsilon$. First, using the comb representation of the total genealogy (Lambert & Uribe Bravo 2016), we show that the genealogy of the descendance of the MRCA of the sample on the times…

The process of most recent common ancestors in an evolving coalescent

Consider a haploid population which has evolved through an exchangeable reproduction dynamics, and in which all individuals alive at time $t$ have a most recent common ancestor (MRCA) who lived at time $A_t$, say. As time goes on, not only the population but also its genealogy evolves: some families will get lost from the population and eventually a new MRCA will be established. For a time-stationary situation and in the limit of infinite population size $N$ with time measured in $N$ generations, i.e. in the scaling of population genetics which leads to Fisher-Wright diffusions and Kingman's c…

Eternal multiplicative coalescent is encoded by its Lévy-type processes

The multiplicative coalescent is a Markov process taking values in ordered $l^2$. It is a mean-field process in which any pair of blocks coalesces at rate proportional to the product of their masses. In Aldous and Limic (1998) each extreme eternal version $(\mathbf{X}(t),- \infty < t < \infty)$ of the multiplicative coalescent was described in three different ways. One of these specifications matches the (marginal) law of $\mathbf{X}(t)$ to that of the ordered excursion lengths above past minima of $\{L_{\mathbf{X}}(s) +ts, \,s \geq 0\}$, where $L_{\mathbf{X}}$ is a certain Lévy-type process w…

变化环境中 Galton-Watson 树的溯祖结构

The coalescent structure of Galton-Watson trees in varying environments

本文研究临界变化环境 Galton-Watson 过程的均匀样本谱系，利用 k 脊与测度变换证明经时间变换后收敛为 Kingman 型普适溯祖结构。

非中性谱系向 Kingman 凝聚过程的弱收敛

Weak Convergence of Non-neutral Genealogies to Kingman's Coalescent

本文在标准假设下证明了经历突变和选择的非中性粒子系统谱系在 càdlàg 路径空间上弱收敛于 Kingman 凝聚过程，突破了以往仅有限维分布收敛的限制，为整个谱系树的分析提供了理论基础。

The multiplicative coalescent, inhomogeneous continuum random trees, and new universality classes for critical random graphs

One major open conjecture in the area of critical random graphs, formulated by statistical physicists, and supported by a large amount of numerical evidence over the last decade [23, 24, 28, 63] is as follows: for a wide array of random graph models with degree exponent $τ\in (3,4)$, distances between typical points both within maximal components in the critical regime as well as on the minimal spanning tree on the giant component in the supercritical regime scale like $n^{(τ-3)/(τ-1)}$. In this paper we study the metric space structure of maximal components of the multiplicative coalescent, i…

Probabilistic Models for the (sub)Tree(s) of Life

The goal of these lectures is to review some mathematical aspects of random tree models used in evolutionary biology to model gene trees or species trees. We start with stochastic models of tree shapes (finite trees without edge lengths), culminating in the $β$-family of Aldous' branching models. We next introduce real trees (trees as metric spaces) and show how to study them through their contour, provided they are properly measured and ordered. We then focus on the reduced tree, or coalescent tree, which is the tree spanned by individuals/species alive at the same fixed time. We show how red…

Generalized Fleming-Viot processes with immigration via stochastic flows of partitions

The generalized Fleming-Viot processes were defined in 1999 by Donnelly and Kurtz using a particle model and by Bertoin and Le Gall in 2003 using stochastic flows of bridges. In both methods, the key argument used to characterize these processes is the duality between these processes and exchangeable coalescents. A larger class of coalescent processes, called distinguished coalescents, was set up recently to incorporate an immigration phenomenon in the underlying population. The purpose of this article is to define and characterize a class of probability-measure valued processes called the gen…

Some recent progress in singular stochastic PDEs

Stochastic PDEs are ubiquitous in mathematical modeling. Yet, many such equations are too singular to admit classical treatment. In this article we review some recent progress in defining, approximating and studying the properties of a few examples of such equations. We focus mainly on the dynamical Phi4 equation, KPZ equation and Parabolic Anderson Model, as well as touch on a few other equations which arise mainly in physics.

Recent progress on Bernoulli convolutions

The Bernoulli convolution with parameter $λ\in(0,1)$ is the measure on $\bf R$ that is the distribution of the random power series $\sum\pmλ^n$, where $\pm$ are independent fair coin-tosses. This paper surveys recent progress on our understanding of the regularity properties of these measures.

Recent progress on the Random Conductance Model

Recent progress on the understanding of the Random Conductance Model is reviewed and commented. A particular emphasis is on the results on the scaling limit of the random walk among random conductances for almost every realization of the environment, observations on the behavior of the effective resistance as well as the scaling limit of certain models of gradient fields with non-convex interactions. The text is an expanded version of the lecture notes for a course delivered at the 2011 Cornell Summer School on Probability.