We study the one-dimensional branching random walk in the case when the step size distribution has a stretched exponential tail, and, in particular, no finite exponential moments. The tail of the step size $X$ decays as $\mathbb{P}[X \geq t] \sim a \exp(-λt^r)$ for some constants $a, λ> 0$ where $r \in (0,1)$. We give a detailed description of the asymptotic behaviour of the position of the rightmost particle, proving almost-sure limit theorems, convergence in law and some integral tests. The limit theorems reveal interesting differences betweens the two regimes $ r \in (0, 2/3)$ and $ r \in (2/3, 1)$, with yet different limits in the boundary case $r = 2/3$.
We prove large deviation results for the position of the rightmost particle, denoted by $M_n$, in a one-dimensional branching random walk in a case when Cramér's condition is not satisfied. More precisely we consider step size distributions with stretched exponential upper and lower tails, i.e.~both tails decay as $e^{-|t|^r}$ for some $r\in( 0,1)$. It is known that in this case, $M_n$ grows as $n^{1/r}$ and in particular faster than linearly in $n$. Our main result is a large deviation principle for the laws of $n^{-1/r}M_n$ . In the proof we use a comparison with the maximum of (a random num…
We study the large deviation probabilities of infinite weighted sums of independent random variables that have stretched exponential tails. This generalizes Kiesel and Stadtmüller (2000), who study the same objects under the assumption of finite exponential moments, and Gantert et al.\ (2014), who study finite weighted sums with stretched exponential tails.
We consider the probability that a weighted sum of $n$ i.i.d. random variables $X_j$, $j = 1, . . ., n$, with stretched exponential tails is larger than its expectation and determine the rate of its decay, under suitable conditions on the weights. We show that the decay is subexponential, and identify the rate function in terms of the tails of $X_j$ and the weights. Our result generalizes the large deviation principle given by Kiesel and Stadtmüller [8] as well as the tail asymptotics for sums of i.i.d. random variables provided by Nagaev [10, 11]. As an application of our result, motivated by…
In the framework of a stochastic picture for the one-dimensional branching Brownian motion, we compute the probability density of the number of particles near the rightmost one at a time $T$, that we take very large, when this extreme particle is conditioned to arrive at a predefined position $x_T$ chosen far ahead of its expected position $m_T$. We recover the previously-conjectured fact that the typical number density of particles a distance $Δ$ to the left of the lead particle, when both $Δ$ and $x_T-Δ-m_T$ are large, is smaller than the mean number density by a factor proportional to $e^{-…
We give a concise self-contained presentation of known and new limit theorems for the one-type Markov branching processes with continuous time. The new streamlined proofs are based on what we call, the tail generating function approach. Our analysis focuses on the singularity points of the master integral equation for the probability generating functions of the current population size.
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 weak convergence of the extremes of supercritical branching Lévy processes $\{\mathbb{X}_t, t \ge0\}$ whose spatial motions are Lévy processes with regularly varying tails. The result is drastically different from the case of branching Brownian motions. We prove that, when properly renormalized, $\mathbb{X}_t$ converges weakly. As a consequence, we obtain a limit theorem for the order statistics of $\mathbb{X}_t$.
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.
Consider a critical branching random walk on $\mathbb{Z}^d$, $d\geq 1$, started with a single particle at the origin, and let $L(x)$ be the total number of particles that ever visit a vertex $x$. We study the tail of $L(x)$ under suitable conditions on the offspring distribution. In particular, our results hold if the offspring distribution has an exponential moment.
The reduced Markov branching process is a stochastic model for the genealogy of an unstructured biological population. Its limit behavior in the critical case is well studied for the Zolotarev-Slack regularity parameter $α\in(0,1]$. We turn to the case of very heavy tailed reproduction distribution $α=0$ assuming Zubkov's regularity condition with parameter $β\in(0,\infty)$. Our main result gives a new asymptotic pattern for the reduced branching process conditioned on non-extinction during a long time interval.
In a seminal paper Biggins and Kyprianou \cite{BKy04} proved the existence of a non degenerate limit for the {\it Derivative martingale} of the branching random walk. As shown in \cite{Aid11} and \cite{Mad11}, this is an object of central importance in the study of the extremes of the branching random walk. In this paper we investigate the tail distribution of the limit of the {\it Derivative Martingale} by mean of the study of the global minimum of the branching random walk. This new approach leads us to extend the results of \cite{Gui90} and \cite{Bur09} under slighter assumptions.
Suppose that $(Z_n)_{n\geq0}$ is a supercritical branching process in independent and identically distributed random environment. The right tail function of the scaled growth rate for $(Z_n)_{n\geq0}$ is studied. The upper bounds for $\displaystyle\mathbb{P}\left[\frac{\log Z_n}{Mn}-μ\geq x\right]$ for any $x\geq3$ are obtained, by applying an extension of the Hoeffding type inequalities.
The presence of frozen-in or quenched disorder in a system can often modify the nature of its phase transition. A particular instance of this phenomenon is the so-called rounding effect: it has been shown in many cases that the free-energy curve of the disordered system at its critical point is smoother than that of the homogenous one. In particular some disordered systems do not allow first-order transitions. We study this phenomenon for the pinning of a renewal with stretched-exponential tails on a defect line (the distribution $K$ of the renewal increments satisfies $K(n) \sim c_K\exp(-n^α)…
We consider a fixed-point equation for a non-negative integer-valued random variable, that appears in branching processes with state-independent immigration. A similar equation appears in the analysis of a single-server queue with a homogeneous Poisson input, feedback and permanent customer(s). It is known that the solution to this equation uniquely exists under mild first and logarithmic moments conditions. We find further the tail asymptotics of the distribution of the solution when the immigration size and branch size distributions are heavy-tailed. We assume that the distributions of inter…
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…
In this paper we analyze a branching process with immigration defined recursively by $X_t=θ_t\circ X_{t-1}+B_t$ for a sequence $(B_t)$ of i.i.d. random variables and random mappings $ θ_t\circ x:=θ_t(x)=\sum_{i=1}^xA_i^{(t)}, $ with $(A_i^{(t)})_{i\in \mathbb{N}_0}$ being a sequence of $\mathbb{N}_0$-valued i.i.d. random variables independent of $B_t$. We assume that one of generic variables $A$ and $B$ has a regularly varying tail distribution. We identify the tail behaviour of the distribution of the stationary solution $X_t$. We also prove CLT for the partial sums that could be further gene…
Consider a branching system with particles moving according to an Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process with drift $μ>0$ and branching according to a law in the domain of attraction of the $(1+β)$-stable distribution. The mean of the branching law is strictly larger than $1$ implying that the system is supercritical and the total number of particles grows exponentially at some rate $λ>0$. It is known that the system obeys a law of large numbers. In the paper we study its rate of convergence. We discover an interesting interplay between the branching rate $λ$ and the drift parameter $μ$. There are three r…
Let (Z_n)_{n\in\N_0} be a d-dimensional random walk in random scenery, i.e., Z_n=\sum_{k=0}^{n-1}Y_{S_k} with (S_k)_{k\in\N_0} a random walk in Z^d and (Y_z)_{z\in Z^d} an i.i.d. scenery, independent of the walk. We assume that the random variables Y_z have a stretched exponential tail. In particular, they do not possess exponential moments. We identify the speed and the rate of the logarithmic decay of Pr(Z_n>t_n n) for all sequences (t_n)_{n\in\N} satisfying a certain lower bound. This complements previous results, where it was assumed that Y_z has exponential moments of all orders. In contr…
Tail asymptotics of the solution $R$ to a fixpoint problem of type $R =_{st} Q + \sum_1^N R_m$ is derived under heavy-tailed conditions allowing both dependence between $Q$ and $N$ and the tails to be of the same order of magnitude. Similar results are derived for a $K$-class version with applications to multitype branching processes and busy periods in multiclass queues.
We study branching processes of independently splitting particles in the continuous time setting. If time is calibrated such that particles live on average one unit of time, the corresponding transition rates are fully determined by the generating function $f$ for the offspring number of a single particle. We are interested in the defective case $f(1)=1-ε$, where each splitting particle with probability $ε$ is able to terminate the whole branching process. A branching process $\{Z_t\}_{t\ge0}$ will be called extendable if $f(q)=q$ and $f(r)=r$ for some $0\le q<r<\infty$. Specializing on the ex…
We consider the critical branching processes in correlated random environment which is positively associated and study the probability of survival up to the n-th generation. Moreover, when the environment is given by fractional Brownian motion, we estimate also the tail of progeny as well as the tail of width.
Given a branching random walk $(Z_n)_{n\geq0}$ on $\mathbb{R}$, let $Z_n(A)$ be the number of particles located in interval $A$ at generation $n$. It is well known (e.g., \cite{biggins}) that under some mild conditions, $Z_n(\sqrt nA)/Z_n(\mathbb{R})$ converges a.s. to $ν(A)$ as $n\rightarrow\infty$, where $ν$ is the standard Gaussian measure. In this work, we investigate its large deviation probabilities under the condition that the step size or offspring law has heavy tail, i.e. the decay rate of $$\mathbb{P}(Z_n(\sqrt nA)/Z_n(\mathbb{R})>p)$$ as $n\rightarrow\infty$, where $p\in(ν(A),1)$. O…
Consider a heavy-tailed branching process (denoted by $Z_{n}$) in random environments, under the condition which infers that $\mathbb{E}\log m(ξ_{0})=\infty$. We show that (1) there exists no proper $c_{n}$ such that $\{Z_{n}/c_{n}\}$ has a proper, non-degenerate limit, (2) normalized by a sequence of functions, a proper limit can be obtained, i.e., $y_{n}\left(\barξ,Z_{n}(\barξ)\right)$ converges almost surely to a random variable $Y(\barξ)$, where $Y\in(0,1)~η$-a.s., (3) finally, we give a necessary and sufficient conditions for the almost sure convergence of $\left\{\frac{U(\barξ,Z_{n}(\bar…
We consider a branching random walk on a multi($Q$)-type, supercritical Galton-Watson tree which satisfies Kesten-Stigum condition. We assume that the displacements associated with the particles of type $Q$ have regularly varying tails of index $α$, while the other types of particles have lighter tails than that of particles of type $Q$. In this article, we derive the weak limit of the sequence of point processes associated with the positions of the particles in the $n^{th}$ generation. We verify that the limiting point process is a randomly scaled scale-decorated Poisson point process (SScDPP…
For a continuous-time catalytic branching random walk (CBRW) on Z, with an arbitrary finite number of catalysts, we study the asymptotic behavior of position of the rightmost particle when time tends to infinity. The mild requirements include the regular variation of the jump distribution tail for underlying random walk and the well-known L log L condition for the offspring numbers. In our classification, given in the previous paper, the analysis refers to supercritical CBRW. The principle result demonstrates that, after a proper normalization, the maximum of CBRW converges in distribution to …
For multitype branching processes with immigration evolving in a random environment and producing a final product we find the tail distribution of the size of the final product accumulated in the system for a life period. Using this result we investigate the tail distribution of the busy periods of the branching type polling systems with random service disciplines and random positive switch-over times
The $N$-particle branching random walk is a discrete time branching particle system with selection. We have $N$ particles located on the real line at all times. At every time step each particle is replaced by two offspring, and each offspring particle makes a jump of non-negative size from its parent's location, independently from the other jumps, according to a given jump distribution. Then only the $N$ rightmost particles survive; the other particles are removed from the system to keep the population size constant. Inspired by work of J. Bérard and P. Maillard, we examine the long term behav…
We study the extremes of branching random walks under the assumption that the underlying Galton-Watson tree has infinite progeny mean. It is assumed that the displacements are either regularly varying or they have lighter tails. In the regularly varying case, it is shown that the point process sequence of normalized extremes converges to a Poisson random measure. We study the asymptotics of the scaled position of the rightmost particle in the $n$-th generation when the tail of the displacement behaves like $\exp(-K(x))$, where either $K$ is a regularly varying function of index $r> 0$, or $K$ …
We study generalized branching random walks, which allow time dependence and local dependence between siblings. Under appropriate tail assumptions, we prove the tightness of $F_n(\cdot-Med(F_n))$, where $F_n(\cdot)$ is the maxima distribution at time $n$ and $Med(F_n)$ is the median of $F_n(\cdot)$. The main component in the argument is a proof of exponential decay of the right tail $1-F_n(\cdot-Med(F_n))$.
Motivated by a seminal paper of Kesten et al. (1975) we consider a branching process with a geometric offspring distribution with i.i.d. random environmental parameters $A_n$, $n\ge 1$ and size -1 immigration in each generation. In contrast to above mentioned paper we assume that the environment is long-tailed, that is that the distribution $F$ of $ξ_n := \log ((1-A_n)/A_n)$ is long-tailed. We prove that although the offspring distribution is light-tailed, the environment itself can produce extremely heavy tails of the distribution of the population size in the n-th generation which becomes ev…
We study the parabolic Anderson problem, that is, the heat equation $\partial_tu=Δu+ξu$ on $(0,\infty)\times{\mathbb{Z}}^d$ with independent identically distributed random potential $\{ξ(z):z\in{\mathbb{Z}}^d\}$ and localized initial condition $u(0,x)={\mathbf{1}}_0(x)$. Our interest is in the long-term behavior of the random total mass $U(t)=\sum_zu(t,z)$ of the unique nonnegative solution in the case that the distribution of $ξ(0)$ is heavy tailed. For this, we study two paradigm cases of distributions with infinite moment generating functions: the case of polynomial or Pareto tails, and the…
Branching Processes in a Random Environment (BPREs) $(Z_n:n\geq0)$ are a generalization of Galton Watson processes where in each generation the reproduction law is picked randomly in an i.i.d. manner. We determine here the upper large deviation of the process when the reproduction law may have heavy tails. The behavior of BPREs is related to the associated random walk of the environment, whose increments are distributed like the logarithmic mean of the offspring distributions. We obtain an expression of the upper rate function of $(Z_n:n\geq0)$, that is the limit of $-\log \mathbb{P}(Z_n\geq e…
We consider subcritical branching processes with immigration which evolve under the influence of a random environment and study the tail distribution of life periods of such processes defined as the length of the time interval between the moment when first invader (or invaders) came to an empty site until the moment when the site becomes empty again. We prove that the tail distribution decays with exponential rate. The main tools are the change of measure and some conditional limit theorems for random walks.
We determine the limiting distribution and the explicit tail behavior for the maximal displacement of a branching symmetric stable process with spatially inhomogeneous branching structure. Here the branching rate is a Kato class measure with compact support and can be singular with respect to the Lebesgue measure.
In the parking model on $\mathbb{Z}^d$, each vertex is initially occupied by a car (with probability $p$) or by a vacant parking spot (with probability $1-p$). Cars perform independent random walks and when they enter a vacant spot, they park there, thereby rendering the spot occupied. Cars visiting occupied spots simply keep driving (continuing their random walk). It is known that $p=1/2$ is a critical value in the sense that the origin is a.s. visited by finitely many distinct cars when $p<1/2$, and by infinitely many distinct cars when $p\geq 1/2$. Furthermore, any given car a.s. eventually…
We consider branching random walks on the Euclidean lattice in dimensions five and higher. In this non-Markovian setting, we first obtain a relationship between the equilibrium measure and Green's function, in the form of an approximate last passage decomposition. Secondly, we obtain exponential moment bounds for functionals of the branching random walk, under optimal condition. As a corollary we obtain an approximate variational characterisation of the branching capacity. We finally derive upper bounds involving the branching capacity for the tail of the time spent in an arbitrary finite coll…
Motivated by seminal paper of Kozlov et al.(1975) we consider in this paper a branching process with a geometric offspring distribution parametrized by random success probability $A$ and immigration equals $1$ in each generation. In contrast to above mentioned article, we assume that environment is heavy-tailed, that is $\log A^{-1} (1-A)$ is regularly varying with a parameter $α>1$, that is that ${\bf P} \Big( \log A^{-1} (1-A) > x \Big) = x^{-α} L(x)$ for a slowly varying function $L$. We will prove that although the offspring distribution is light-tailed, the environment itself can produce …
We investigate subcritical Galton-Watson branching processes with immigration in a random environment. Using Goldie's implicit renewal theory we show that under general Cramér condition the stationary distribution has a power law tail. We determine the tail process of the stationary Markov chain, prove point process convergence, and convergence of the partial sums. The original motivation comes from Kesten, Kozlov and Spitzer seminal 1975 paper, which connects a random walk in a random environment model to a special Galton-Watson process with immigration in a random environment. We obtain new …
We study a continuous-time branching random walk on the lattice $\mathbb{Z}^{d}$, $d\in \mathbb{N}$, with a single source of branching, that is the lattice point where the birth and death of particles can occur. The random walk is assumed to be homogeneous, symmetric and irreducible but, in contrast to previous investigations, the random walk transition intensities $a(x,y)$ decrease as $|y-x|^{-(d+α)}$ for $|y-x|\to \infty$, where $α\in(0,2)$, that leads to an infinite variance of the random walk jumps. The~mechanism of the birth and death of particles at the source is governed by a continuous…
We consider a branching-selection particle system on the real line, introduced by Brunet and Derrida. In this model the size of the population is fixed to a constant $N$. At each step individuals in the population reproduce independently, making children around their current position. Only the $N$ rightmost children survive to reproduce at the next step. Bérard and Gouéré studied the speed at which the cloud of individuals drifts, assuming the tails of the displacement decays at exponential rate; Bérard and Maillard took interest in the case of heavy tail displacements. We take interest in an …
In this paper we consider the first passage percolation with identical and independent exponentially distributions, called the Eden growth model, and we study the upper tail large deviations for the first passage time ${\rm T}$. Our main results prove that for any $ξ>0$ and $x\neq 0$, $\mathbb{P}({\rm T}(0,nx)>n(μ+ξ))$ decays as $\exp{(-(2dξ+o(1))n)}$ with a time constant $μ$ and a dimension $d$. Moreover, we extend the result to stretched exponential distributions. On the contrary, we construct a continuous distribution with a finite exponential moment where the rate function does not exist.
