Growth-fragmentation processes model systems of cells that grow continuously over time and then fragment into smaller pieces. Typically, on average, the number of cells in the system exhibits asynchronous exponential growth and, upon compensating for this, the distribution of cell sizes converges to an asymptotic profile. However, the long-term stochastic behaviour of the system is more delicate, and its almost sure asymptotics have been so far largely unexplored. In this article, we study a growth-fragmentation process whose cell sizes are bounded above, and prove the existence of regimes with differing almost sure long-term behaviour.
The aim of this paper is to present a self-similar growth-fragmentation process linked to a Brownian excursion in the upper half-plane $\mathbb{H}$, obtained by cutting the excursion at horizontal levels. We prove that the associated growth-fragmentation is related to one of the growth-fragmentation processes introduced by Bertoin, Budd, Curien and Kortchemski.
Growth-fragmentation processes describe systems of particles in which each particle may grow larger or smaller, and divide into smaller ones as time proceeds. Unlike previous studies, which have focused mainly on the self-similar case, we introduce a new type of growth-fragmentation which is closely related to Lévy driven Ornstein-Uhlenbeck type processes. Our model can be viewed as a generalization of compensated fragmentation processes introduced by Bertoin, or the stochastic counterpart of a family of growth-fragmentation equations. We establish a convergence criterion for a sequence of suc…
A self-similar growth-fragmentation describes the evolution of particles that grow and split as time passes. Its genealogy yields a self-similar continuum tree endowed with an intrinsic measure. Extending results of Haas for pure fragmentations, we relate the existence of an absolutely continuous profile to a simple condition in terms of the index of self-similarity and the so-called cumulant of the growth-fragmentation. When absolutely continuous, we approximate the profile by a function of the small fragments, and compute the Hausdorff dimension in the singular case. Applications to Boltzman…
In this note, we consider general growth-fragmentation equations from a probabilistic point of view. Using Foster-Lyapunov techniques, we study the recurrence of the associated Markov process depending on the growth and fragmentation rates. We prove the existence and uniqueness of its stationary distribution, and we are able to derive precise bounds for its tails in the neighborhoods of both $0$ and $+\infty$. This study is systematically compared to the results obtained so far in the literature for this class of integro-differential equations.
We provide explicit conditions, in terms of the transition kernel of its driving particle, for a Markov branching process to admit a scaling limit toward a self-similar growth-fragmentation with negative index. We also derive a scaling limit for the genealogical embedding considered as a compact real tree.
Markovian growth-fragmentation processes introduced by Bertoin model a system of growing and splitting cells in which the size of a typical cell evolves as a Markov process $X$ without positive jumps. We find that two growth-fragmentation processes associated respectively with two processes $X$ and $Y$ (with different laws) may have the same distribution, if $(X,Y)$ is a bifurcator, roughly speaking, which means that they coincide up to a bifurcation time and then evolve independently. Using this criterion, we deduce that the law of a self-similar growth-fragmentation is determined by a cumula…
Pitman~(1999) describes a duality relationship between fragmentation and coagulation operators. An explicit relationship is described for the two-parameter Poisson-Dirichlet laws, with parameters {\footnotesize $(α,θ)$} and $(β,θ/α)$, wherein $PD(α, θ)$ is coagulated by $PD(β,θ/α)$ for $0<α<1$, $0 \leqβ<1$ and $-β<θ/α$. This remarkable explicit agreement was obtained by combinatorial methods via exchangeable partition probability functions~(EPPF). This work discusses an alternative analysis which can feasibly extend the characterizations above to more general models of $PD(α,θ)$ coagulated wit…
We consider the model of Brownian motion indexed by the Brownian tree. For every $r\geq 0$ and every connected component of the set of points where Brownian motion is greater than $r$, we define the boundary size of this component, and we then show that the collection of these boundary sizes evolves when $r$ varies like a well-identified growth-fragmentation process. We then prove that the same growth-fragmentation process appears when slicing a Brownian disk at height $r$ and considering the perimeters of the resulting connected components.
This work develops further a probabilist approach to the asymptotic behavior of growth-fragmentation semigroups via the Feynman-Kac formula, which was introduced in a joint article with A.R. Watson [4]. Here, it is first shown that the sufficient condition for a Malthusian behavior which was established in [4], is also necessary. We then provide a simple criterion to ensure exponential speed of convergence, which enables us to treat cases than were not covered previously in the literature.
Markovian growth-fragmentation processes introduced by Bertoin extend the pure fragmentation model by allowing the fragments to grow larger or smaller between dislocation events. What becomes of the known asymptotic behaviors of self-similar pure fragmentations when growth is added to the fragments is a natural question that we investigate in this paper. Our results involve the terminal value of some additive martingales whose uniform integrability is an essential requirement. Dwelling first on the homogeneous case, we exploit the connection with branching random walks and in particular the ma…
Markovian growth-fragmentation processes describe a family of particles which can grow larger or smaller with time, and occasionally split in a conservative manner. They were introduced in a work of Bertoin, where special attention was given to the self-similar case. A Malthusian condition was notably given under which the process does not locally explode, in the sense that for all times, the masses of all the particles can be listed in non-increasing order. Our main result in this work states the converse: when this condition is not verified, then the growth-fragmentation process explodes alm…
We are interested in the cycles obtained by slicing at all heights random Boltzmann triangulations with a simple boundary. We establish a functional invariance principle for the lengths of these cycles, appropriately rescaled, as the size of the boundary grows. The limiting process is described using a self-similar growth-fragmentation process with explicit parameters. To this end, we introduce a branching peeling exploration of Boltzmann triangulations, which allows us to identify a crucial martingale involving the perimeters of cycles at given heights. We also use a recent result concerning …
The genealogical structure of self-similar growth-fragmentations can be described in terms of a branching random walk. The so-called intrinsic area $\mathrm{A}$ arises in this setting as the terminal value of a remarkable additive martingale. Motivated by connections with some models of random planar geometry, the purpose of this work is to investigate the effect of conditioning a self-similar growth-fragmentation on its intrinsic area. The distribution of $\mathrm{A}$ satisfies a useful smoothing transform which enables us to establish the existence of a regular density $a$ and to determine t…
We consider a self-similar fragmentation process in which the generic particle of size $x$ is replaced at probability rate $x^α$, by its offspring made of smaller particles, where $α$ is some positive parameter. The total of offspring sizes may be both larger or smaller than $x$ with positive probability. We show that under certain conditions the typical size in the ensemble is of the order $t^{-1/α}$ and that the empirical distribution of sizes converges to a random limit which we characterise in terms of the reproduction law.
We consider a random process on recursive trees, with three types of events. Vertices give birth at a constant rate (growth), each edge may be removed independently (fragmentation of the tree) and clusters (or trees) are frozen with a rate proportional to their sizes (isolation of connected component). A phase transition occurs when the isolation is able to stop the growth fragmentation process and cause extinction. When the process survives, the number of clusters increases exponentially and we prove that the normalized empirical measure of clusters a.s. converges to a limit law on recursive …
The growth-fragmentation equation models systems of particles that grow and reproduce as time passes. An important question concerns the asymptotic behaviour of its solutions. Bertoin and Watson ($2018$) developed a probabilistic approach relying on the Feynman-Kac formula, that enabled them to answer to this question for sublinear growth rates. This assumption on the growth ensures that microscopic particles remain microscopic. In this work, we go further in the analysis, assuming bounded fragmentations and allowing arbitrarily small particles to reach macroscopic mass in finite time. We esta…
The self-similar growth-fragmentation equation describes the evolution of a medium in which particles grow and divide as time proceeds, with the growth and splitting of each particle depending only upon its size. The critical case of the equation, in which the growth and division rates balance one another, was considered by Doumic and Escobedo in the homogeneous case where the rates do not depend on the particle size. Here, we study the general self-similar case, using a probabilistic approach based on Lévy processes and positive self-similar Markov processes which also permits us to analyse q…
Growth-fragmentation processes describe the evolution of systems of cells which grow continuously and fragment suddenly; they are used in models of cell division and protein polymerisation. Typically, we may expect that in the long run, the concentrations of cells with given masses increase at some exponential rate, and that, after compensating for this, they arrive at an asymptotic profile. Up to now, this question has mainly been studied for the average behavior of the system, often by means of a natural partial integro-differential equation and the associated spectral theory. However, the b…
We study the variations of the principal eigenvalue associated to a growth-fragmentation-death equation with respect to a parameter acting on growth and fragmentation. To this aim, we use the probabilistic individual-based interpretation of the model. We study the variations of the survival probability of the stochastic model, using a generation by generation approach. Then, making use of the link between the survival probability and the principal eigenvalue established in a previous work, we deduce the variations of the eigenvalue with respect to the parameter of the model.
We study the behaviour of a natural measure defined on the leaves of the genealogical tree of some branching processes, namely self-similar growth-fragmentation processes. Each particle, or cell, is attributed a positive mass that evolves in continuous time according to a positive self-similar Markov process and gives birth to children at negative jumps events. We are interested in the asymptotics of the mass of the ball centered at the root, as its radius decreases to $0$. We obtain the almost sure behaviour of this mass when the Eve cell starts with a strictly positive size. This differs fro…
The purpose of the present work is twofold. First, we develop the theory of general self-similar growth-fragmentation processes by focusing on martingales which appear naturally in this setting and by recasting classical results for branching random walks in this framework. In particular, we establish many-to-one formulas for growth-fragmentations and define the notion of intrinsic area of a growth-fragmentation. Second, we identify a distinguished family of growth-fragmentations closely related to stable Lévy processes, which are then shown to arise as the scaling limit of the perimeter proce…
We develop a unified approach to the problem of clustering in the three different fields of applications, as indicated in the title the paper. The approach is based on Khintchine's probabilistic method that grew out of the Darwin-Fawler method in statistical physics. Our main result is the derivation of asymptotic formulae for probabilities of clusters (= groups) of certain sizes as the number of particles goes to infinity. Based on these formulae we prove the zero-one law for the distribution of the largest cluster and establish the threshold function in the phase transition from 0 to 1 in th…
The growth-fragmentation equation describes a system of growing and dividing particles, and arises in models of cell division, protein polymerisation and even telecommunications protocols. Several important questions about the equation concern the asymptotic behaviour of solutions at large times: at what rate do they converge to zero or infinity, and what does the asymp-totic profile of the solutions look like? Does the rescaled solution converge to its asymptotic profile at an exponential speed? These questions have traditionally been studied using analytic techniques such as entropy methods …
The growth-fragmentation equation models systems of particles that grow and split as time proceeds. An important question concerns the large time asymptotic of its solutions. Doumic and Escobedo ($2016$) observed that when growth is a linear function of the mass and fragmentations are homogeneous, the so-called Malthusian behaviour fails. In this work we further analyse the critical case by considering a piecewise linear growth, namely \begin{equation} c(x) = \begin{cases} a_{_-} x \quad \quad x < 1 \\ a_{_+} x \quad \quad x \geq 1, \end{cases} \end{equation} with $0 < a_{_+} < a_{_-}$. We giv…
We consider a homogenous fragmentation process with killing at an exponential barrier. With the help of two families of martingales we analyse the growth of the largest fragment for parameter values that allow for survival. In this respect the present paper is also concerned with the probability of extinction of the killed process.
Moderate deviation principles (MDPs) for random walks on covering graphs with groups of polynomial volume growth are discussed in a geometric point of view. They deal with any intermediate spatial scalings between those of laws of large numbers and those of central limit theorems. The corresponding rate functions are given by quadratic forms determined by the Albanese metric associated with the given random walks. We apply MDPs to establish laws of the iterated logarithm on the covering graphs by characterizing the set of all limit points of the normalized random walks.
We define a spatially-dependent fragmentation process, which involves rectangles breaking up into progressively smaller pieces at rates that depend on their shape. Long, thin rectangles are more likely to break quickly, and are also more likely to split along their longest side. We are interested in how the system evolves over time: how many fragments are there of different shapes and sizes, and how did they reach that state? Our theorem gives an almost sure growth rate along paths, which does not match the growth rate in expectation - there are paths where the expected number of fragments of …
We model the growth of a cell population by a piecewise deterministic Markov branching tree. Each cell splits into two offsprings at a division rate $B(x)$ that depends on its size $x$. The size of each cell grows exponentially in time, at a rate that varies for each individual. We show that the mean empirical measure of the model satisfies a growth-fragmentation type equation if structured in both size and growth rate as state variables. We construct a nonparametric estimator of the division rate $B(x)$ based on the observation of the population over different sampling schemes of size $n$ on …
We present two approaches to study invasion in growth-fragmentation-death mod- els. The first one is based on a stochastic individual based model, which is a piecewise deterministic branching process with a continuum of types, and the second one is based on an integro-differential model. The invasion of the population is described by the survival probability for the former model and by an eigenproblem for the latter one. We study these two notions of invasion fitness, giving different characterizations of the growth of the population, and we make links between these two complementary points of…
Fragmentation processes are part of a broad class of models describing the evolution of a system of particles which split apart at random. These models are widely used in biology, materials science and nuclear physics, and their asymptotic behaviour at large times is interesting both mathematically and practically. The spine decomposition is a key tool in its study. In this work, we consider the class of compensated fragmentations, or homogeneous growth-fragmentations, recently defined by Bertoin. We give a complete spine decomposition of these processes in terms of a Lévy process with immigra…
We propose a new deterministic growth model which captures certain features of both the Gompertz and Korf laws. We investigate its main properties, with special attention to the correction factor, the relative growth rate, the inflection point, the maximum specific growth rate, the lag time and the threshold crossing problem. Some data analytic examples and their performance are also considered. Furthermore, we study a stochastic counterpart of the proposed model, that is a linear time-inhomogeneous birth-death process whose mean behaves as the deterministic one. We obtain the transition proba…
We establish the central limit theorem for the number of groups at the equilibrium of a coagulation-fragmentation process given by a parameter function with polynomial rate of growth. The result obtained is compared with the one for random combinatorial structures obeying the logarithmic condition.
