We study the limiting occupation density process for a large number of critical and driftless branching random walks. We show that the rescaled occupation densities of $\lfloor sN\rfloor$ branching random walks, viewed as a function-valued, increasing process $\{g_{s}^{N}\}_{s\ge 0}$, converges weakly to a pure jump process in the Skorohod space $\mathbb D([0, +\infty), \mathcal C_{0}(\mathbb R))$, as $N\to\infty$. Moreover, the jumps of the limiting process consist of i.i.d. copies of an Integrated super-Brownian Excursion (ISE) density, rescaled and weighted by the jump sizes in a real-valued stable-1/2 subordinator.
Functional limit theorems are presented for the rescaled occupation time fluctuations process of a critical finite variance branching particle system in $R^d$ with symmetric a-stable motion starting off from either a standard Poisson random field or from the equilibrium distribution for intermediate dimensions a<d<2a. The limit processes are determined sub-fractional and fractional Brownian motion respectively.
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…
Limit theorems are presented for the rescaled occupation time fluctuation process of a critical finite variance branching particle system in $\mathbb{R}^{d}$ with symmetric $α$-stable motion starting off from either a standard Poisson random field or the equilibrium distribution for critical $d=2α$ and large $d>2α$ dimensions. The limit processes are generalised Wiener processes. The obtained convergence is in space-time, finite-dimensional distributions sense. With the addtional assumption on the branching law we obtain functional convergence.
We establish limit theorems for re-scaled occupation time fluctuations of a sequence of branching particle systems in $\R^d$ with anisotropic space motion and weakly degenerate splitting ability. In the case of large dimensions, our limit processes lead to a new class of operator-scaling Gaussian random fields with non-stationary increments. In the intermediate and critical dimensions, the limit processes have spatial structures analogous to (but more complicated than) those arising from the critical branching particle system without degeneration considered by Bojdecki et al.{\it Stochastic Pr…
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 a branching system consisting of particles moving according to a Markov family in $\Rd$ and undergoing subcritical branching with a constant rate $V>0$. New particles immigrate to the system according to homogeneous space-time Poisson random field. The process of the fluctuations of the rescaled occupation time is studied with very mild assumptions on the Markov family. In this general setting a functional central limit theorem is proved. The subcriticality of the branching law is crucial for the limit behaviour and in a sense overwhelms the properties of the particles' motion. It …
In this paper we consider two related stochastic models. The first one is a branching system consisting of particles moving according to a Markov family in R^d and undergoing subcritical branching with a constant rate of V>0. New particles immigrate to the system according to a homogeneous space time Poisson random field. The second model is the superprocess corresponding to the branching particle system. We study rescaled occupation time process and the process of its fluctuations with very mild assumptions on the Markov family. In the general setting a functional central limit theorem as wel…
A simple random walk and a Brownian motion are considered on a spider that is a collection of half lines (we call them legs) joined in the origin. We give a strong approximation of these two objects and their local times. For fixed number of legs we establish limit theorems on local and occupation times in n steps.
We establish limit theorems for the fluctuations of the rescaled occupation time of a $(d,α,β)$-branching particle system. It consists of particles moving according to a symmetric $α$-stable motion in $\mathbb{R}^d$. The branching law is in the domain of attraction of a (1+$β$)-stable law and the initial condition is an equilibrium random measure for the system (defined below). In the paper we treat separately the cases of intermediate $α/β<d<(1+β)α/β$, critical $d=(1+β)α/β$ and large $d>(1+β)α/β$ dimensions. In the most interesting case of intermediate dimensions we obtain a version of a frac…
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…
We consider a nearest neighbor random walk on the one-dimensional integer lattice with drift towards the origin determined by an asymptotically vanishing function of the number of visits to zero. We show the existence of distinct regimes according to the rate of decay of the drift. In particular, when the rate is sufficiently slow, the position of the random walk, properly normalized, converges to a symmetric exponential law. In this regime, in contrast to the classical case, the range of the walk scales differently from its position.
We continue our study of critical branching random walk and branching capacity. In this paper we introduce branching recurrence and branching transience and prove an analogous version of Wiener's Test.
We show that for finite-range, symmetric random walks on general transient Cayley graphs, the expected occupation time of any given ball of radius $r$ is $O(r^{5/2})$.. We also study the volume-growth property of the wired spanning forests on general Cayley graphs, showing that the expected number of vertices in the component of the identity inside any given ball of radius $r$ is $O(r^{11/2})$.
Correction to "The stepping stone model in a random environment" -- limit theorems for the occupation time and intersection time of reversible random walks in random environments
We consider particle systems in locally compact Abelian groups with particles moving according to a process with symmetric stationary independent increments and undergoing one and two levels of critical branching. We obtain long time fluctuation limits for the occupation time process of the one-and two-level systems. We give complete results for the case of finite variance branching, where the fluctuation limits are Gaussian random fields, and partial results for an example of infinite variance branching, where the fluctuation limits are stable random fields. The asymptotics of the occupation …
The lonely branching random walks on ${\mathbb Z}^d$ is an interacting particle system where each particle moves as an independent random walk and undergoes critical binary branching when it is alone. We show that if the symmetrized walk is recurrent, lonely branching random walks die out locally. Furthermore, the same result holds if additional branching is allowed when the walk is not alone.
We extend the theory of discrete capacity to critical branching random walk. We introduce branching capacity for any finite subset of $\Z^d, d\geq5$. Analogous to the regular discrete capacity, branching capacity is closely related to the asymptotics of the probability of visiting a fixed finite set by a critical branching random walk starting from a distant point and the conditional distribution of the hitting point.
The paper considers excited random walks (ERWs) on integers in i.i.d. environments with a bounded number of excitations per site. The emphasis is primarily on the critical case for the transition between recurrence and transience which occurs when the total expected drift $δ$ at each site of the environment is equal to 1 in absolute value. Several crucial estimates for ERWs fail in the critical case and require a separate treatment. The main results discuss the depth and duration of excursions from the origin for $|δ|=1$ as well as occupation times of negative and positive semi-axes and scalin…
We consider a branching system of random walk in random environment (in location) in $\mathbb{N}$. We will give the exact limit value of $\frac{M_{n}}{n}$, where $M_{n}$ denotes the minimal position of branching random walk at time $n$. A key step in the proof is to transfer our branching random walks in random environment (in location) to branching random walks in random environment (in time), by use of Bramson's "branching processes within a branching process" .
We prove limit theorems for rescaled occupation time fluctuations of a (d,alpha,beta)-branching particle system (particles moving in R^d according to a spherically symmetric alpha-stable Levy process, (1+beta)-branching, 0<beta<1, uniform Poisson initial state), in the cases of critical dimension, d=alpha(1+beta)/beta, and large dimensions, d>alpha(1+beta)/beta. The fluctuation processes are continuous but their limits are stable processes with independent increments, which have jumps. The convergence is in the sense of finite-dimensional distributions, and also of space-time random fields (ti…
Branching-stable processes have recently appeared as counterparts of stable subordinators, when addition of real variables is replaced by branching mechanism for point processes. Here, we are interested in their domains of attraction and describe explicit conditions for a branching random walk to converge after a proper magnification to a branching-stable process. This contrasts with deep results that have been obtained during the last decade on the asymptotic behavior of branching random walks and which involve either shifting without rescaling, or demagnification.
The $(d,α,β,γ)$-branching particle system consists of particles moving in $R^d$ according to a symmetric $α$-stable Lévy process $(0<α\leq 2)$, splitting with a critical $(1+β)$-branching law $(0<β\leq 1)$, and starting from an inhomogeneous Poisson random measure with intensity measure $μ_γ(dx)=dx/(1+|x|^γ), γ\geq 0$. By means of time rescaling $T$ and Poisson intensity measure $H_Tμ_γ$, occupation time fluctuation limits for the system as $T\to\infty$ have been obtained in two special cases: Lebesgue measure ($γ=0$, the homogeneous case), and finite measures $(γ>d)$. In some cases $H_T\equiv…
Let $S_n$ be a lattice random walk with mean zero and finite variance, and let $Λ^a_n$ be its occupation measure at level $a$. In this note, we prove local limit theorems for $\Pr[S_n=x,Λ^a_n=\ell]$ and $\Pr[S_n=x|Λ^a_n=\ell]$ in the cases where $a$, $|x-a|$ and $\ell$ are either zero or at least of order $\sqrt n$. The asymptotic description of these quantities matches the corresponding probabilities for Brownian motion and its local time process. This note can be seen as a generalization of previous results by Kaigh (1975) and Uchiyama (2011). In similar fashion to these results, our method …
For the critical branching random walk in $\mathbb{Z}^{4}$ with branching at the origin only we find the asymptotic behavior of the probability of the event that there are particles at the origin at moment $t\rightarrow \infty $ and prove a Yaglom type conditional limit theorem for the number of individuals at the origin given that there are particles at the origin.
We establish the almost sure validity of the multifractal formalism for R^d-valued branching random walks on the whole relative interior of the natural convex domain of study.
We develop a criterion for transience for a general model of branching Markov chains. In the case of multi-dimensional branching random walk in random environment (BRWRE) this criterion becomes explicit. In particular, we show that \emph{Condition L} of Comets and Popov is necessary and sufficient for transience as conjectured. Furthermore, the criterion applies to two important classes of branching random walks and implies that the critical branching random walk is transient resp. dies out locally.
Given a branching random walk on a graph, we consider two kinds of truncations: by inhibiting the reproduction outside a subset of vertices and by allowing at most $m$ particles per site. We investigate the convergence of weak and strong critical parameters of these truncated branching random walks to the analogous parameters of the original branching random walk. As a corollary, we apply our results to the study of the strong critical parameter of a branching random walk restricted to the cluster of a Bernoulli bond percolation.
It is well known that the behaviour of a branching process is completely described by the generating function of the offspring law and its fixed points. Branching random walks are a natural generalization of branching processes: a branching process can be seen as a one-dimensional branching random walk. We define a multidimensional generating function associated to a given branching random walk. The present paper investigates the similarities and the differences of the generating functions, their fixed points and the implications on the underlying stochastic process, between the one-dimensiona…
We consider the branching random walk drifting to $-\infty$ and we investigate large deviations-type estimates for the first passage time. We prove the corresponding law of large numbers and the central limit theorem.
In this paper, we study the critical branching random walk in the critical dimension, $Z^4$. We provide the asymptotics of the probability of visiting a fixed finite subset and the range of the critical branching random walk conditioned on the total number of offsprings. We also prove that conditioned on visiting, the first visiting point converges in distribution.
We study the branching random walk on weighted graphs; site-breeding and edge-breeding branching random walks on graphs are seen as particular cases. We describe the strong critical value in terms of a geometrical parameter of the graph. We characterize the weak critical value and relate it to another geometrical parameter. We prove that, at the strong critical value, the process dies out locally almost surely; while, at the weak critical value, global survival and global extinction are both possible.
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…
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 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.
We consider branching random walks and contact processes on infinite, connected, locally finite graphs whose reproduction and infectivity rates across edges are inversely proportional to vertex degree. We show that when the ambient graph is a Galton-Watson tree then, in certain circumstances, the branching random walks and contact processes will have weak survival phases. We also provide bounds on critical values.
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…
We give three different criteria for transience of a Branching Markov Chain. These conditions enable us to give a classification of Branching Random Walks in Random Environment (BRWRE) on Cayley Graphs in recurrence and transience. This classification is stated explicitly for BRWRE on $\Z^d.$ Furthermore, we emphasize the interplay between Branching Markov Chains and the spectral radius. We prove properties of the spectral radius of the Random Walk in Random Environment with the help of appropriate Branching Markov Chains.
In this note, we make explicit the law of the renormalized supercritical branching random walk, giving credit to a conjecture formulated in a previous works of the authors for a continuous analog of the branching random walk. Also, in the case of a branching random walk on a homogeneous tree, we express the law of the corresponding limiting renormalized Gibbs measures, confirming, in this discrete model, conjectures formulated by physicists about the Poisson-Dirichlet nature of the jumps in the limit, and precising the conjecture by giving the spatial distribution of these jumps.
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.
We consider a supercritical symmetric continuous-time branching random walk on a multidimensional lattice with a finite number of particle generation sources of varying positive intensities without any restrictions on the variance of jumps of the underlying random walk. It is assumed that the spectrum of the evolution operator contains at least one positive eigenvalue. We prove that under these conditions the largest eigenvalue of the evolution operator is simple and determines the rate of exponential growth of particle quantities at every point on the lattice as well as on the lattice as a wh…
We consider the time evolution of a lattice branching random walk with local perturbations. Under certain conditions, we prove the Carleman type estimation for the moments of a particle subpopulation number and show the existence of a steady state.
Occupation-Time Fluctuations of an Age-Dependent Branching System Driven by Poisson Immigration
Centro de Investigación en Matemáticas（数学研究中心）；Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics, Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”（索非亚“圣克利门特·奥赫里德斯基”大学数学与信息学院）；Institute of Mathematics and Informatics, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences（保加利亚科学院数学与情报研究所）
We consider branching random walk in random environment (BRWRE) and prove the existence of deterministic subsequences along which their maximum, centered at its mean, is tight. This partially answers an open question in arXiv:1711.00852. The method of proof adapts an argument developed by Dekking and Host for branching random walks with bounded increments. The question of tightness without the need for subsequences remains open.
We study occupancy counts for the critical nearest-neighbor branching random walk on the $d$-dimensional lattice, conditioned on non-extinction. For $d\geq 3$, Lalley and Zheng (2011) showed that the properly scaled joint distribution of the number of sites occupied by $j$ generation-$n$ particles, $j=1,2,\ldots$, converges in distribution as $n$ goes to infinity, to a deterministic multiple of a single exponential random variable. The limiting exponential variable can be understood as the classical Yaglom limit of the total population size of generation $n$. Here we study the second order flu…
We write $R_n$ for the minimal position attained after time $n$ by a branching random walk in the boundary case. In this article, we prove that $R_n - \frac{1}{2} \log n$ converges in law toward a shifted Gumbel distribution.
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 distribution of the maximal displacement of particles positions for the whole time of the population existence in the model of critical and subcritical catalytic branching random walk on Z. In particular, we prove that in the case of simple symmetric random walk on Z, the distribution of the maximal displacement has "a heavy tail" decreasing as a function of the power 1/2 or 1, when the branching process is critical or subcritical, respectively. These statements describe new effects which do not arise in the corresponding investigations of the maximal displacement of critical and …
Foss and Zachary (2003) and Foss, Palmowski and Zachary (2005) studied the probability of achieving a receding boundary on a time interval of random length by a random walk with a heavy-tailed jump distribution. They have proposed and developed a new approach that allows to generalise results of Asmussen (1998) onto the case of arbitrary stopping times and a wide class of nonlinear boundaries, and to obtain uniform results over all stopping times. In this paper, we consider a class of branching random walks with fading branching and obtain results on the tail asymptotics for the maximum of a b…
In this paper, we study the probability of visiting a distant point $a\in \mathbb{Z}^4$ by critical branching random walk starting from the origin. We prove that this probability is bounded by $1/(|a|^2\log |a|)$ up to a constant.
