We consider a superprocess with coalescing Brownian spatial motion. We first prove a dual relationship between two systems of coalescing Brownian motions. In consequence we can express the Laplace functionals for the superprocess in terms of coalescing Brownian motions, which allows us to obtain some explicit results. We also point out several connections between such a superprocess and the Arratia flow. A more general model is discussed at the end of this paper.
A superprocess with coalescing spatial motion is constructed in terms of one-dimensional excursions. Based on this construction, it is proved that the superprocess is purely atomic and arises as scaling limit of a special form of the superprocess with dependent spatial motion studied in Dawson {\it et al.} (2001) and Wang (1997, 1998).
We construct a class of superprocesses by taking the high density limit of a sequence of interacting-branching particle systems. The spatial motion of the superprocess is determined by a system of interacting diffusions, the branching density is given by an arbitrary bounded non-negative Borel function, and the superprocess is characterized by a martingale problem as a diffusion process with state space $M(\IR)$, improving and extending considerably the construction of Wang (1997, 1998). It is then proved in a special case that a suitable rescaled process of the superprocess converges to the u…
We consider a critical superprocess $\{X;\mathbf P_μ\}$ with general spatial motion and spatially dependent stable branching mechanism with lowest stable index $γ_0 > 1$. We first show that, under some conditions, $\mathbf P_μ(\|X_t\|\neq 0)$ converges to $0$ as $t\to \infty$ and is regularly varying with index $(γ_0-1)^{-1}$. Then we show that, for a large class of non-negative testing functions $f$, the distribution of $\{X_t(f);\mathbf P_μ(\cdot|\|X_t\|\neq 0)\}$, after appropriate rescaling, converges weakly to a positive random variable $\mathbf z^{(γ_0-1)}$ with Laplace transform $E[e^{-…
We construct a class of discontinuous superprocesses with dependent spatial motion and general branching mechanism. The process arises as the weak limit of critical interacting-branching particle systems where the spatial motions of the particles are not independent. The main work is to solve the martingale problem. When we turn to the uniqueness of the process, we generalize the localization method introduced by [D.W. Stroock, Diffusion processes associated with Levy generators, Z. Wahrscheinlichkeitstheorie und Verw. Gebiete, 32(1975) 209--244] to the measure-valued context. As for existence…
It is well understood that a supercritical superprocess is equal in law to a discrete Markov branching process whose genealogy is dressed in a Poissonian way with immigration which initiates subcritial superprocesses. The Markov branching process corresponds to the genealogical description of prolific individuals, that is individuals who produce eternal genealogical lines of decent, and is often referred to as the skeleton or backbone of the original superprocess. The Poissonian dressing along the skeleton may be considered to be the remaining non-prolific genealogical mass in the superprocess…
We consider (discrete time) branching particles in a random environment which is i.i.d. in time and possibly spatially correlated. We prove a representation of the limit process by means of a Brownian snake in random environment.
A non-critical branching immigration superprocess with dependent spatial motion is constructed and characterized as the solution of a stochastic equation driven by a time-space white noise and an orthogonal martingale measure. A representation of its conditional log-Laplace functionals is established, which gives the uniqueness of the solution and hence its Markov property. Some properties of the superprocess including an ergodic theorem are also obtained.
Spatial branching processes became increasingly popular in the past decades, not only because of their obvious connection to biology, but also because superprocesses are intimately related to nonlinear partial differential equations. Another hot topic in today's research in probability theory is `random media', including the now classical problems on `Brownian motion among obstacles' and the more recent `random walks in random environment' and `catalytic branching' models. These notes aim to give a gentle introduction into some topics in spatial branching processes and superprocesses in determ…
We are interested in the evolving genealogy of a birth and death process with trait structure and ecological interactions. Traits are hereditarily transmitted from a parent to its offspring unless a mutation occurs. The dynamics may depend on the trait of the ancestors and on its past and allows interactions between individuals through their lineages. We define an interacting historical particle process describing the genealogies of the living individuals; it takes values in the space of point measures on an infinite dimensional càdlàg path space. This individual-based process can be approxima…
In the article titled "Branching-Coalescing Particle Systems" published in Probability Theory and Related Fields 131(3), pages 376-414, (2005), Theorem 7 as stated there is incorrect. Indeed, we show by counterexample that the equality that we claimed there to hold for all time, in general holds only for almost every time with respect to Lebesgue measure. We prove a weaker version of the theorem that is still sufficient for our applications in the mentioned paper.
We prove a convergence theorem for a sequence of super-Brownian motions moving among hard Poissonian obstacles, when the intensity of the obstacles grows to infinity but their diameters shrink to zero in an appropriate manner. The superprocesses are shown to converge in probability for the law $\mathbf{P}$ of the obstacles, and $\mathbf{P}$-almost surely for a subsequence, towards a superprocess with underlying spatial motion given by Brownian motion and (inhomogeneous) branching mechanism $ψ(u,x)$ of the form $ψ(u,x)= u^2+ κ(x)u$, where $κ(x)$ depends on the density of the obstacles. This wor…
This paper studies systems of particles following independent random walks and subject to annihilation, binary branching, coalescence, and deaths. In the case without annihilation, such systems have been studied in our 2005 paper "Branching-coalescing particle systems". The case with annihilation is considerably more difficult, mainly as a consequence of the non-monotonicity of such systems and a more complicated duality. Nevertheless, we show that adding annihilation does not significantly change the long-time behavior of the process and in fact, systems with annihilation can be obtained by t…
Examples of interacting particle systems on $\mathbb{Z}$ as Pfaffian point processes: coalescing branching random walks and annihilating random walks with immigration
We construct superprocesses with dependent spatial motion (SDSMs) in Euclidean spaces $R^d$ with $d\ge1$ and show that,even when they start at some unbounded initial positive Radon measure such as Lebesgue measure on $R^d$, their local times exist when $d\le3$. A Tanaka formula of the local time is also derived.
Motivated by kinetically constrained interacting particle systems (KCM), we consider a reversible coalescing and branching simple exclusion process on a general finite graph $G=(V,E)$ dual to the biased voter model on $G$. Our main goal are tight bounds on its logarithmic Sobolev constant and relaxation time, with particular focus on the delicate slightly supercritical regime in which the equilibrium density of particles tends to zero as $|V|\rightarrow \infty$. Our results allow us to recover very directly and improve to $\ell^p$-mixing, $p\ge 2$, and to more general graphs, the mixing time r…
In a supercritical branching particle system, the trimmed tree consists of those particles which have descendants at all times. We develop this concept in the superprocess setting. For a class of continuous superprocesses with Feller underlying motion on compact spaces, we identify the trimmed tree, which turns out to be a binary splitting particle system with a new underlying motion that is a compensated h-transform of the old one. We show how trimmed trees may be estimated from above by embedded binary branching particle systems.
Evans (1992) described the semi-group of a superprocess with quadratic branching mechanism under a martingale change of measure in terms of the semi-group of an immortal particle and the semigroup of the superprocess prior to the change of measure. This result, commonly referred to as the spine decomposition, alludes to a pathwise decomposition in which independent copies of the original process `immigrate' along the path of the immortal particle. For branching particle diffusions the analogue of this decomposition has already been demonstrated in the pathwise sense, see for example Hardy and …
This paper concerns the almost sure time dependent local extinction behavior for super-coalescing Brownian motion $X$ with $(1+β)$-stable branching and Lebesgue initial measure on $\bR$. We first give a representation of $X$ using excursions of a continuous state branching process and Arratia's coalescing Brownian flow. For any nonnegative, nondecreasing and right continuous function $g$, put τ:=\sup \{t\geq 0: X_t([-g(t),g(t)])>0 \}. We prove that $\bP\{τ=\infty\}=0$ or 1 according as the integral $\int_1^\infty g(t)t^{-1-1/β} dt$ is finite or infinite.
A purely atomic immigration superprocess with dependent spatial motion in the space of tempered measures is constructed as the unique strong solution of a stochastic integral equation driven by Poisson processes based on the excursion law of a Feller branching diffusion, which generalizes the work of Dawson and Li (2003). As an application of the stochastic equation, it is proved that the superprocess possesses a local time which is Holder continuous of order $α$ for every $α< 1/2$. We establish two scaling limit theorems for the immigration superprocess, from which we derive scaling limits fo…
National University of Singapore（新加坡国立大学）；The Czech Academy of Sciences, Institute of Information Theory and Automation（捷克科学院信息与自动化研究所）；East China Normal University（华东师范大学）
Suppose that $X=\{X_t, t\ge 0\}$ is a supercritical superprocess on a locally compact separable metric space $(E, m)$. Suppose that the spatial motion of $X$ is a Hunt process satisfying certain conditions and that the branching mechanism is of the form $$ ψ(x,λ)=-a(x)λ+b(x)λ^2+\int_{(0,+\infty)}(e^{-λy}-1+λy)n(x,dy), \quad x\in E, \quadλ> 0, $$ where $a\in \mathcal{B}_b(E)$, $b\in \mathcal{B}_b^+(E)$ and $n$ is a kernel from $E$ to $(0,\infty)$ satisfying $$ \sup_{x\in E}\int_0^\infty y^2 n(x,dy)<\infty. $$ Put $T_tf(x)=\mathbb{P}_{δ_x}< f,X_t>$. Let $λ_0>0$ be the largest eigenvalue of the g…
In this work we model the dynamics of a population that evolves as a continuous time branching process with a trait structure and ecological interactions in form of mutations and competition between individuals. We generalize existing microscopic models by allowing individuals to have multiple offspring at a reproduction event. Furthermore, we allow the reproduction law to be influenced both by the trait type of the parent as well as by the mutant trait type. We look for tractable large population approximations. More precisely, under some natural assumption on the branching and mutation mecha…
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…
We study a spatial branching model, where the underlying motion is $d$-dimensional ($d\ge1$) Brownian motion and the branching rate is affected by a random collection of reproduction suppressing sets dubbed mild obstacles. The main result of this paper is the quenched law of large numbers for the population for all $d\ge1$. We also show that the branching Brownian motion with mild obstacles spreads less quickly than ordinary branching Brownian motion by giving an upper estimate on its speed. When the underlying motion is an arbitrary diffusion process, we obtain a dichotomy for the quenched lo…
We provide a probabilistic proof of a well known connection between a special case of the Allen-Cahn equation and mean curvature flow. We then prove a corresponding result for scaling limits of the spatial $Λ$-Fleming-Viot process with selection, in which the selection mechanism is chosen to model what are known in population genetics as hybrid zones. Our proofs will exploit a duality with a system of branching (and coalescing) random walkers which is of some interest in its own right.
We introduce a new class of stochastic partial differential equations (SPDEs) with seed bank modeling the spread of a beneficial allele in a spatial population where individuals may switch between an active and a dormant state. Incorporating dormancy and the resulting seed bank leads to a two-type coupled system of equations with migration between both states. We first discuss existence and uniqueness of seed bank SPDEs and provide an equivalent delay representation that allows a clear interpretation of the age structure in the seed bank component. The delay representation will also be crucial…
We investigate the genealogical structure of general critical or subcritical continuous-state branching processes. Analogously to the coding of a discrete tree by its contour function, this genealogical structure is coded by a real-valued stochastic process called the height process, which is itself constructed as a local time functional of a Levy process with no negative jumps. We present a detailed study of the height process and of an associated measure-valued process called the exploration process, which plays a key role in most applications. Under suitable assumptions, we prove that whene…
We extend earlier results on conditioning of super-Brownian motion to general branching rules. We obtain representations of the conditioned process, both as an $h$-transform, and as an unconditioned superprocess with immigration along a branching tree. Unlike the finite-variance branching setting, these trees are no longer binary, and strictly positive mass can be created at branch points. This construction is singular in the case of stable branching. We analyze this singularity first by approaching the stable branching function via analytic approximations. In this context the singularity of t…
Information propagation on graphs is a fundamental topic in distributed computing. One of the simplest models of information propagation is the push protocol in which at each round each agent independently pushes the current knowledge to a random neighbour. In this paper we study the so-called coalescing-branching random walk (COBRA), in which each vertex pushes the information to $k$ randomly selected neighbours and then stops passing information until it receives the information again. The aim of COBRA is to propagate information fast but with a limited number of transmissions per vertex per…
The Brownian web is a collection of one-dimensional coalescing Brownian motions starting from everywhere in space and time, and the Brownian net is a generalization that also allows branching. They appear in the diffusive scaling limits of many one-dimensional interacting particle systems with branching and coalescence. This article gives an introduction to the Brownian web and net, and how they arise in the scaling limits of various one-dimensional models, focusing mainly on coalescing random walks and random walks in i.i.d. space-time random environments. We will also briefly survey models a…
We ask the question "when will natural selection on a gene in a spatially structured population cause a detectable trace in the patterns of genetic variation observed in the contemporary population?". We focus on the situation in which 'neighbourhood size', that is the effective local population density, is small. The genealogy relating individuals in a sample from the population is embedded in a spatial version of the ancestral selection graph and through applying a diffusive scaling to this object we show that whereas in dimensions at least three, selection is barely impeded by the spatial s…
We obtain the Brownian net of Sun and Swart (2008) as the scaling limit of the paths traced out by a system of continuous (one-dimensional) space and time branching and coalescing random walks. This demonstrates a certain universality of the net, which we have not seen explored elsewhere. The walks themselves arise in a natural way as the ancestral lineages relating individuals in a sample from a biological population evolving according to the spatial Lambda-Fleming-Viot process. Our scaling reveals the effect, in dimension one, of spatial structure on the spread of a selectively advantageous …
We consider the problem of minimizing the entropy of a law with respect to the law of a reference branching Brownian motion under density constraints at an initial and final time. We call this problem the branching Schrödinger problem by analogy with the Schrödinger problem, where the reference process is a Brownian motion. Whereas the Schrödinger problem is related to regularized (a.k.a. entropic) optimal transport, we investigate here the link of the branching Schrödinger problem with regularized unbalanced optimal transport. This link is shown at two levels. First, relying on duality argume…
We consider the spatial Lambda-Fleming-Viot process model for frequencies of genetic types in a population living in R^d, with two types of individuals (0 and 1) and natural selection favouring individuals of type 1. We first prove that the model is well-defined and provide a measure-valued dual process encoding the locations of the `potential ancestors' of a sample taken from such a population. We then consider two cases, one in which the dynamics of the process are driven by events of bounded radii and one incorporating large-scale events whose radii have a polynomial tail distribution. In b…
