We construct random locally compact real trees called Levy trees that are the genealogical trees associated with continuous-state branching processes. More precisely, we define a growing family of discrete Galton-Watson trees with i.i.d. exponential branch lengths that is consistent under Bernoulli percolation on leaves; we define the Levy tree as the limit of this growing family with respect to the Gromov-Hausdorff topology on metric spaces. This elementary approach notably includes supercritical trees and does not make use of the height process introduced by Le Gall and Le Jan to code the genealogy of (sub)critical continuous-state branching processes. We construct the mass measure of Levy trees and we give a decomposition along the ancestral subtree of a Poisson sampling directed by the mass measure.
We prove a strong form of the invariance under re-rooting of the distribution of the continuous random trees called Levy trees. This extends previous results due to several authors.
This paper deals with generalized backward doubly stochastic differential equations driven by a Lévy process (GBDSDEL, in short). Under left or right continuous and linear growth conditions, we prove the existence of minimal (resp. maximal) solutions.
We investigate the random continuous trees called Lévy trees, which are obtained as scaling limits of discrete Galton-Watson trees. We give a mathematically precise definition of these random trees as random variables taking values in the set of equivalence classes of compact rooted R-trees, which is equipped with the Gromov-Hausdorff distance. To construct Lévy trees, we make use of the coding by the height process which was studied in detail in previous work. We then investigate various probabilistic properties of Lévy trees. In particular we establish a branching property analogous to the w…
We construct the analogue of the local time -- at a fixed point $x$ -- for Markov processes indexed by Levy trees. We start by proving that Markov processes indexed by Levy trees satisfy a special Markov property which can be thought as a spatial version of the classical Markov property. Then, we construct the analogue of the local time by an approximation procedure and we characterize the support of its Lebesgue-Stieltjes measure. We also give an equivalent construction in terms of a special family of exit local times. Finally, combining these results, we show that the points at which the Mar…
In this article, we study the asymptotic behaviour of Lévy processes with no positive jumps conditioned to stay positive. We establish integral tests for the lower envelope at 0 and at $+\infty$ and an analogue of Khintchin's law of the iterated logarithm at 0 and $+\infty$, for the upper envelope.
We introduce the notion of a hereditary property for rooted real trees and we also consider reduction of trees by a given hereditary property. Leaf-length erasure, also called trimming, is included as a special case of hereditary reduction. We only consider the metric structure of trees, and our framework is the space $\bT$ of pointed isometry classes of locally compact rooted real trees equipped with the Gromov-Hausdorff distance. Some of the main results of the paper are a general tightness criterion in $\bT$ and limit theorems for growing families of trees. We apply these results to Galton-…
By studying an admissible family of branching mechanisms introduced in Li (2014), we obtain a pruning procedure on Lévy trees. Then we could construct a decreasing Lévy-CRT-valued process $\{{\mathcal T}_t\}$ by pruning Lévy trees and an analogous process $\{{\mathcal T}^*_t\}$ by pruning a critical Lévy tree conditioned to be infinite. Under a regular condition on the admissible family of branching mechanisms, we show that the law of $\{{\mathcal T}_t\}$ at the ascension time can be represented by $\{{\mathcal T}^*_t\}$. The results generalize those studied in Abraham and Delmas (2012).
We introduce flows of branching processes with competition, which describe the evolution of general continuous state branching populations in which interactions between individuals give rise to a negative density dependence term. This generalizes the logistic branching processes studied by Lambert. Following the approach developed by Dawson and Li, we first construct such processes as the solutions of certain flow of stochastic differential equations. We then propose a novel genealogical description for branching processes with competition based on interactive pruning of Lévy-trees, and establ…
We consider an initial Eve-population and a population of neutral mutants, such that the total population dies out in finite time. We describe the evolution of the Eve-population and the total population with continuous state branching processes, and the neutral mutation procedure can be seen as an immigration process with intensity proportional to the size of the population. First we establish a Williams' decomposition of the genealogy of the total population given by a continuous random tree, according to the ancestral lineage of the last individual alive. This allows us give a closed formul…
We study the diameter of L{é}vy trees that are random compact metric spaces obtained as the scaling limits of Galton-Watson trees. L{é}vy trees have been introduced by Le Gall and Le Jan (1998) and they generalise Aldous' Continuum Random Tree (1991) that corresponds to the Brownian case. We first characterize the law of the diameter of L{é}vy trees and we prove that it is realized by a unique pair of points. We prove that the law of L{é}vy trees conditioned to have a fixed diameter r $\in$ (0, $\infty$) is obtained by glueing at their respective roots two independent size-biased L{é}vy trees …
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 consider the height process of a Lévy process with no negative jumps, and its associated continuous tree representation. Using tools developed by Duquesne and Le Gall, we construct a fragmentation process at height, which generalizes the fragmentation at height of stable trees given by Miermont. In this more general framework, we recover that the dislocation measures are the same as the dislocation measures of the fragmentation at node introduced by Abraham and Delmas, up to a factor equal to the fragment size. We also compute the asymptotic for the number of small fragments.
We study the local convergence of critical Galton-Watson trees and Levy trees under various conditionings. Assuming a very general monotonicity property on the functional of random trees, we show that random trees conditioned to have large functional values always converge locally to immortal trees. We also derive a very general ratio limit property for functionals of random trees satisfying the monotonicity property. Then we move on to study the local convergence of critical continuous-state branching processes, and prove a similar result. Finally we give a definition of continuum condensatio…
Motivated by limits of critical inhomogeneous random graphs, we construct a family of sequences of measured metric spaces that we call continuous multiplicative graphs, that are expected to be the universal limit of graphs related to the multiplicative coalescent (the Erdős--Rényi random graph, more generally the so-called rank-one inhomogeneous random graphs of various types, and the configuration model). At the discrete level, the construction relies on a new point of view on (discrete) inhomogeneous random graphs that involves an embedding into a Galton--Watson forest. The new representatio…
Stochastic Loewner Evolutions (SLE) with a multiple sqrt(kappa)B of Brownian motion B as driving process are random planar curves (if kappa<=4) or growing compact sets generated by a curve (if kappa>4). We consider here more general Levy processes as driving processes and obtain evolutions expected to look like random trees or compact sets generated by trees, respectively. We show that when the driving force is of the form sqrt(kappa)B+theta^(1/alpha)S for a symmetric alpha-stable Levy process S, the cluster has zero or positive Lebesgue measure according to whether kappa<=4 or kappa>4. We als…
We discuss subordination of random compact R-trees. We focus on the case of the Brownian tree, where the subordination function is given by the past maximum process of Brownian motion indexed by the tree. In that particular case, the subordinate tree is identified as a stable Levy tree with index 3/2. As a more precise alternative formulation, we show that the maximum process of the Brownian snake is a time change of the height process coding the Levy tree. We then apply our results to properties of the Brownian map. In particular, we recover, in a more precise form, a recent result of Miller …
On the infinite time horizon approximation for Lévy-driven McKean-Vlasov SDEs with non-globally Lipschitz continuous and super-linearly growth drift and diffusion coefficients
A new class of generalized backward doubly stochastic differential equations (GBDSDEs in short) driven by Teugels martingales associated with Lévy process are investigated. We establish a comparison theorem which allows us to derive an existence result of solutions under continuous and linear growth conditions.
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 the height process of a Levy process with no negative jumps, and its associated continuous tree representation. Using Levy snake tools developed by Duquesne and Le Gall, with an underlying Poisson process, we construct a fragmentation process, which in the stable case corresponds to the self-similar fragmentation described by Miermont. For the general fragmentation process we compute a family of dislocation measures as well as the law of the size of a tagged fragment. We also give a special Markov property for the snake which is interesting in itself.
Pruning processes $(\mathcal{F}(θ),θ\geq 0)$ have been studied separately for Galton-Watson trees and for Lévy trees/forests. We establish here a limit theory that strongly connects the two studies. This solves an open problem by Abraham and Delmas, also formulated as a conjecture by Löhr, Voisin and Winter. Specifically, we show that for any sequence of Galton-Watson forests $\mathcal{F}_n$, $n\geq 1$, in the domain of attraction of a Lévy forest $\mathcal{F}$, suitably scaled pruning processes $(\mathcal{F}_n(θ),θ\geq 0)$ converge in the Skorohod topology on cadlag functions with values in t…
We consider radial Loewner evolution driven by unimodular Lévy processes. We rescale the hulls of the evolution by capacity, and prove that the weak limit of the rescaled hulls exists. We then study a random growth model obtained by driving the Loewner equation with a compound Poisson process. The process involves two real parameters: the intensity of the underlying Poisson process and a localization parameter of the Poisson kernel which determines the jumps. A particular choice of parameters yields a growth process similar to the Hastings-Levitov $\rm{HL}(0)$ model. We describe the asymptotic…
In this paper, we consider a large class of purely discontinuous rotationally symmetric Levy processes. We establish sharp two-sided estimates for the transition densities of such processes killed upon leaving an open set D. When D is a κ-fat open set, the sharp two-sided estimates are given in terms of surviving probabilities and the global transition density of the Levy process. When D is a C^{1, 1} open set and the Levy exponent of the process is given by Ψ(ξ)= ϕ(|ξ|^2) with ϕbeing a complete Bernstein function satisfying a mild growth condition at infinity, our two-sided estimates are expl…
We consider a random walk on a Galton-Watson tree in random environment, in the subdiffusive case. We prove the convergence of the renormalised height function of the walk towards the continuous-time height process of a spectrally positive strictly stable Lévy process, jointly with the convergence of the renormalised range of the walk towards the real tree coded by the latter continuous-time height process.
A Markov Additive Process is a bi-variate Markov process $(ξ,J)=\big((ξ_t,J_t),t\geq0\big)$ which should be thought of as a multi-type Lévy process: the second component $J$ is a Markov chain on a finite space $\{1,\ldots,K\}$, and the first component $ξ$ behaves locally as a Lévy process, with local dynamics depending on $J$. In the subordinator-like case where $ξ$ is nondecreasing, we establish several results concerning the moments of $ξ$ and of its exponential functional $I_ξ=\int_{0}^{\infty} e^{-ξ_t}\mathrm dt,$ extending the work of Carmona et al., and Bertoin and Yor. We then apply the…
In this work, we give a description of all sigma-finite measures on the space of rooted compact real trees which satisfy a certain regenerative property. We show that any infinite measure which satisfies the regenerative property is the "law" of a Levy tree, that is, the "law" of a tree-valued random variable that describes the genealogy of a population evolving according to a continuous-state branching process. On the other hand, we prove that a probability measure with the regenerative property must be the law of the genealogical tree associated with a continuous-time discrete-state branchin…
This paper studies the behavior of RWRE on trees in the critical case left open in previous work. For trees of exponential growth, a random perturbation of the transition probabilities can change a transient random walk into a recurrent one. This is the opposite of what occurs on trees of sub-exponential growth.
We consider a spectrally positive Lévy process $X$ that does not drift to $+\infty$, viewed as coding for the genealogical structure of a (sub)critical branching process, in the sense of a contour or exploration process \cite{GaJa98,Lam10}. We denote by $I$ the past infimum process defined for each $t\geq 0$ by $I_t:= \inf_{[0,t]} X$ and we let $γ$ be the unique time at which the excursion of the reflected process $X-I$ away from 0 attains its supremum. We prove that the pre-$γ$ and the post-$γ$ subpaths of this excursion are invariant under space-time reversal, which has several other consequ…
We study a class of Hermitian random matrices which includes and generalizes Wigner matrices, heavy-tailed random matrices, and sparse random matrices such as the adjacency matrices of Erdos-Renyi random graphs with p ~ 1/N. Our NxN random matrices have real entries which are i.i.d. up to symmetry. The distributions may depend on N, however, the sums of rows must converge in distribution; it is then well-known that the limiting distributions are infinitely divisible. We show that a limiting empirical spectral distribution (LSD) exists, and via local weak convergence of associated graphs, the L…
We introduce a family of branch merging operations on continuum trees and show that Ford CRTs are distributionally invariant. This operation is new even in the special case of the Brownian CRT, which we explore in more detail. The operations are based on spinal decompositions and a regenerativity preserving merging procedure of $(α, θ)$-strings of beads, that is, random intervals $[0, L_{α, θ}]$ equipped with a random discrete measure $dL^{-1}$ arising in the limit of ordered $(α, θ)$-Chinese restaurant processes as introduced recently by Pitman and Winkel. Indeed, we iterate the branch mergin…
We introduce regenerative tree growth processes as consistent families of random trees with n labelled leaves, n>=1, with a regenerative property at branch points. This framework includes growth processes for exchangeably labelled Markov branching trees, as well as non-exchangeable models such as the alpha-theta model, the alpha-gamma model and all restricted exchangeable models previously studied. Our main structural result is a representation of the growth rule by a sigma-finite dislocation measure kappa on the set of partitions of the natural numbers extending Bertoin's notion of exchangeab…
We use a natural ordered extension of the Chinese Restaurant Process to grow a two-parameter family of binary self-similar continuum fragmentation trees. We provide an explicit embedding of Ford's sequence of alpha model trees in the continuum tree which we identified in a previous article as a distributional scaling limit of Ford's trees. In general, the Markov branching trees induced by the two-parameter growth rule are not sampling consistent, so the existence of compact limiting trees cannot be deduced from previous work on the sampling consistent case. We develop here a new approach to es…
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.
We derive factorization identities for a class of preemptive-resume queueing systems, with batch arrivals and catastrophes that, whenever they occur, eliminate multiple customers present in the system. These processes are quite general, as they can be used to approximate Levy processes, diffusion processes, and certain types of growth-collapse processes; thus, all of the processes mentioned above also satisfy similar factorization identities. In the Levy case, our identities simplify to both the well-known Wiener-Hopf factorization, and another interesting factorization of reflected Levy proce…
We prove that the growth constants for nearest-neighbour lattice trees and lattice (bond) animals on the integer lattice Zd are asymptotic to 2de as the dimension goes to infinity, and that their critical one-point functions converge to e. Similar results are obtained in dimensions d>8 in the limit of increasingly spread-out models; in this case the result for the growth constant is a special case of previous results of M. Penrose. The proof is elementary, once we apply previous results of T. Hara and G. Slade obtained using the lace expansion.
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 …
Let $X_t$ be any additive process in $\mathbb{R}^d.$ There are finite indices $δ_i, β_i, i=1,2$ and a function $u$, all of which are defined in terms of the characteristics of $X_t$, such that \liminf_{t\to0}u(t)^{-1/η}X_t^*= \cases{0, \quad if $η>δ_1$, \cr\infty, \quad if $η<δ_2$,} \limsup_{t\to0}u(t)^{-1/η}X_t^*= \cases{0, \quad if $η>β_2$, \cr\infty, \quad if $η<β_1$,}\qquad {a.s.}, where $X_t^*=\sup_{0\le s\le t}|X_s|.$ When $X_t$ is a Lévy process with $X_0=0$, $δ_1=δ_2$, $β_1=β_2$ and $u(t)=t.$ This is a special case obtained by Pruitt. When $X_t$ is not a Lévy process, its characteristi…
In invasion percolation, the edges of successively maximal weight (the outlets) divide the invasion cluster into a chain of ponds separated by outlets. On the regular tree, the ponds are shown to grow exponentially, with law of large numbers, central limit theorem and large deviation results. The tail asymptotics for a fixed pond are also studied and are shown to be related to the asymptotics of a critical percolation cluster, with a logarithmic correction.
We compute the first three terms of the 1/d expansions for the growth constants and one-point functions of nearest-neighbour lattice trees and lattice (bond) animals on the integer lattice Zd, with rigorous error estimates. The proof uses the lace expansion, together with a new expansion for the one-point functions based on inclusion-exclusion.
We first consider the growth of trees by probabilistic attachment of new vertices to leaves. This leads to a growth model based on vertex clusters and probabilities assigned to clusters. This model turns out to be readily applicable to attachment at any depth of the tree, hence the paper evolves to a general study of tree growth by cluster-based attachment. Drawing inspiration from the concept of intrinsic vertex fitness due to Bianconi and Barabási, we introduce vertex mass as an additive intrinsic vertex attribute. Unlike Bianconi and Barabási who used fitness as a vertex degree multiplier i…
We consider a class of density-dependent branching processes which generalises exponential, logistic and Gompertz growth. A population begins with a single individual, grows exponentially initially, and then growth may slow down as the population size moves towards a carrying capacity. At a time while the population is still growing superlinearly, a fixed number of individuals are sampled and their coalescent tree is drawn. Taking the sampling time and carrying capacity simultaneously to infinity, we prove convergence of the coalescent tree to a limiting tree which is in a sense universal over…
We study the growth of a time-ordered rooted tree by probabilistic attachment of new vertices to leaves. We construct a likelihood function of the leaves based on the connectivity of the tree. We take such connectivity to be induced by the merging of directed ordered paths from leaves to the root. Combining the likelihood with an assigned prior distribution leads to a posterior leaf distribution from which we sample attachment points for new vertices. We present computational examples of such Bayesian tree growth. Although the discussion is generic, the initial motivation for the paper is the …
It is known that for every $α\geq 1$ there is a planar triangulation in which every ball of radius $r$ has size $Θ(r^α)$. We prove that for $α<2$ every such triangulation is quasi-isometric to a tree. The result extends to Riemannian 2-manifolds of finite genus, and to large-scale-simply-connected graphs. We also prove that every planar triangulation of asymptotic dimension 1 is quasi-isometric to a tree.
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 study a model of growing planar tree graphs where in each time step we separate the tree into two components by splitting a vertex and then connect the two pieces by inserting a new link between the daughter vertices. This model generalises the preferential attachment model and Ford's $α$-model for phylogenetic trees. We develop a mean field theory for the vertex degree distribution, prove that the mean field theory is exact in some special cases and check that it agrees with numerical simulations in general. We calculate various correlation functions and show that the intrinsic Hausdorff d…
