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 usual super Brownian motion. An extension to measure-valued branching catalysts is also discussed.
In this paper we establish a weak and a strong law of large numbers for supercritical superprocesses with general non-local branching mechanisms. Our results complement earlier results obtained for superprocesses with only local branching. Several interesting examples are developed, including multitype continuous-state branching processes, multitype superdiffusions and superprocesses with discontinuous spatial motions and non-decomposable branching mechanisms.
We provide a path-wise "backbone" decomposition for supercritical superprocesses with non-local branching. Our result complements a related result obtained for super-critical superprocesses without non-local branching in [1]. Our approach relies heavily on the use of so-called Dynkin-Kuznetsov N-measures.
We show the existence of superprocesses in a random medium with location dependent branching. Technically, we make use of a duality relation to establish the uniqueness of the martingale problem and to obtain the moment formulas.
A new formulation of non-local branching superprocesses is given from which we derive as special cases the rebirth, the multitype, the mass-structured, the multilevel and the age-reproduction-structured superprocesses and the superprocess-controlled immigration process. This unified treatment simplifies considerably the proof of existence of the old classes of superprocesses and also gives rise to some new ones.
In this paper, we provide a pathwise spine decomposition for superprocesses with both local and non-local branching mechanisms under a martingale change of measure. This result complements the related results obtained in Evans (1993), Kyprianou et al. (2012) and Liu, Ren and Song (2009) for superprocesses with purely local branching mechanisms and in Chen, Ren and Song (2016) and Kyprianou and Palau (2016) for multitype superprocesses. As an application of this decomposition, we obtain necessary/sufficient conditions for the limit of the fundamental martingale to be non-degenerate. In particul…
We show that density functions of a $(α,1,β)$-superprocesses are almost sure multifractal for $α>β+1$, $β\in(0,1)$ and calculate the corresponding spectrum of singularities.
A family of continuous-state branching processes with immigration are constructed as the solution flow of a stochastic equation system driven by time-space noises. The family can be regarded as an inhomogeneous increasing path-valued branching process with immigration. Two nonlocal branching immigration superprocesses can be defined from the flow. We identify explicitly the branching and immigration mechanisms of those processes. The results provide new perspectives into the tree-valued Markov processes of Aldous and Pitman [Ann. Inst. Henri Poincaré Probab. Stat. 34 (1998) 637-686] and Abraha…
We decompose the genealogy of a general superprocess with spatially dependent branching mechanism with respect to the last individual alive (Williams decomposition). This is a generalization of the main result of Delmas and Hénard [Electron. J. Probab.,18,1-43,2013] where only superprocesses with spatially dependent quadratic branching mechanism were considered. As an application of the Williams decomposition, we prove that, for some superprocesses, the normalized total mass will converge to a point mass at its extinction time. This generalizes a result of Tribe [Ann. Probab.,20,286-311,1992] …
We would like to give an overview of results on regularity, or better to say "irregularity", properties of densities at fixed times of super-Brownian motion with $(1+β)$-stable branching for $β<1$. First, the following dichotomy for the density is shown: it is continuous in the dimension $d=1$ and locally unbounded in all higher dimensions where it exists. Then in $d=1$ we determine pointwise and local Hölder exponents of the density, and calculate the multifractal spectrum corresponding to pointwise Hölder exponents.
In this paper, we provide a construction of the so-called backbone decomposition for multitype supercritical superprocesses. While backbone decompositions are fairly well-known for both continuous-state branching processes and superprocesses in the one-type case, so far no such decompositions or even description of prolific genealogies have been given for the multitype cases. Here we focus on superprocesses, but by turning the movement off, we get the prolific backbone decomposition for multitype continuous-state branching processes as an easy consequence of our results.
We extend the class of $(ξ,ψ,K)$-superprocesses known so far by applying a simple transformation induced by a \lq\lq weight function\rq\rq\ for the one-particle motion. These transformed superprocesses may exist under weak conditions on the branching parameters, and their state space automatically extends to a certain space of possibly infinite Radon measures. It turns out that a number of superprocesses which were so far not included in the general theory fall into this class. For instance, we are able to extend the hyperbolic branching catalyst of Fleischmann and Mueller to the case of $β$-b…
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…
For $0<α\leq2$, a super-$α$-stable motion $X$ in $\mathsf{R}^d$ with branching of index $1+β\in(1,2)$ is considered. Fix arbitrary $t>0$. If $d<α/β$, a dichotomy for the density function of the measure $X_t$ holds: the density function is locally Hölder continuous if $d=1$ and $α>1+β$ but locally unbounded otherwise. Moreover, in the case of continuity, we determine the optimal local Hölder index.
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^{-…
In this paper, we establish some functional central limit theorems for a large class of general supercritical superprocesses with spatially dependent branching mechanisms satisfying a second moment condition. In the particular case when the state $E$ is a finite set and the underline motion is an irreducible Markov chain on $E$, our results are superprocess analogs of the functional central limit theorems of \cite{Janson} for supercritical multitype branching processes. The results of this paper are refinements of the central limit theorems in \cite{RSZ3}.
A system of mutually interacting superprocesses with migration is constructed as the limit of a sequence of branching particle systems arising from population models. The uniqueness in law of the superprocesses is established using the pathwise uniqueness of a system of stochastic partial differential equations with non-Lipschitz coefficients, which is satisfied by the corresponding system of distribution-function-valued processes.
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…
In this paper, we establish a central limit theorem for a large class of general supercritical superprocesses with spatially dependent branching mechanisms satisfying a second moment condition. This central limit theorem generalizes and unifies all the central limit theorems obtained recently in Miłoś (2012, arXiv:1203:6661) and Ren, Song and Zhang (2013, to appear in Acta Appl. Math., DOI 10.1007/s10440-013-9837-0) for supercritical super Ornstein-Uhlenbeck processes. The advantage of this central limit theorem is that it allows us to characterize the limit Gaussian field. In the case of supe…
The goal of this paper has two-folds. First, we establish skeleton and spine decompositions for superprocesses whose underlying processes are general symmetric Hunt processes. Second, we use these decompositions to obtain weak and strong law of large numbers for supercritical superprocesses where the spatial motion is a symmetric Hunt process on a locally compact metric space $E$ and the branching mechanism takes the form $$ψ_β(x,λ)=-β(x)λ+α(x)λ^{2}+\int_{(0,{\infty})}(e^{-λy}-1+λy)π(x,dy)$$ with $β\in\mathcal{B}_{b}(E)$, $α\in \mathcal{B}^{+}_{b}(E)$ and $π$ being a kernel from $E$ to $(0,{\i…
Consider any supercritical Galton-Watson process which may become extinct with positive probability. It is a well-understood and intuitively obvious phenomenon that, on the survival set, the process may be pathwise decomposed into a stochastically `thinner' Galton-Watson process, which almost surely survives and which is decorated with immigrants, at every time step, initiating independent copies of the original Galton-Watson process conditioned to become extinct. The thinner process is known as the backbone and characterizes the genealogical lines of descent of prolific individuals in the ori…
We present a genealogy for superprocesses with a non-homogeneous quadratic branching mechanism, relying on a weighted version of the superprocess and a Girsanov theorem. We then decompose this genealogy with respect to the last individual alive (William's decomposition). Letting the extinction time tend to infinity, we get the Q-process by looking at the superprocess from the root, and define another process by looking from the top. Examples including the multitype Feller diff usion and the superdiffusion are provided.
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.
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…
We consider a $d$-dimensional branching particle system in a random environment. Suppose that the initial measures converge weakly to a measure with bounded density. Under the Mytnik-Sturm branching mechanism, we prove that the corresponding empirical measure $X_t^n$ converges weakly in the Skorohod space $D([0,T];M_F(\mathbb{R}^d))$ and the limit has a density $u_t(x)$, where $M_F(\mathbb{R}^d)$ is the space of finite measures on $\mathbb{R}^d$. We also derive a stochastic partial differential equation $u_t(x)$ satisfies. By using the techniques of Malliavin calculus, we prove that $u_t(x)$ i…
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 construct two kinds of stochastic flows of discrete Galton-Watson branching processes. Some scaling limit theorems for the flows are proved, which lead to local and nonlocal branching superprocesses over the positive half line.
We construct a flow of continuous time and discrete state branching processes. Some scaling limit theorems for the flow are proved, which lead to the path-valued branching processes and nonlocal branching superprocesses over the positive half line studied in Li (2012).
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…
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.
Using a Tanaka representation of the local time for a class of superprocesses with dependent spatial motion, as well as sharp estimates from the theory of uniformly parabolic partial differential equations, the joint Hölder continuity in time and space of said local times is obtained in two and three dimensional Euclidean space.
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…
We study optimal buying and selling strategies in target zone models. In these models the price is modeled by a diffusion process which is reflected at one or more barriers. Such models arise for example when a currency exchange rate is kept above a certain threshold due to central bank intervention. We consider the optimal portfolio liquidation problem for an investor for whom prices are optimal at the barrier and who creates temporary price impact. This problem will be formulated as the minimization of a cost-risk functional over strategies that only trade when the price process is located a…
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…
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.
We construct a measure-valued branching Markov process associated with a nonlinear boundary value problem, where the boundary condition has a nonlinear pseudo monotone branching mechanism term $-β$, which includes as a limit case $β(u) = - u^{m}$, with $0 < m < 1$. The process is then used in the probabilistic representation of the solution of the parabolic problem associated with a nonlinear Neumann boundary value problem. In this way the classical association of the superprocesses to the Dirichlet boundary value problems also holds for the nonlinear Neumann boundary value problems. It turns …
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 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-value…
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…
It is well known that, starting with finite mass, the super-Brownian motion dies out in finite time. The goal of this article is to show that with some additional work, one can prove finite time die-out for two types of systems of stochastic differential equations on the lattice Z^d. Our first system involves the heat equation on the lattice Z^d, with a nonlinear noise term u(t,x)^gamma dB_x(t), with 1/2 <= gamma < 1. The B_x are independent Brownian motions. When gamma = 1/2, the measure which puts mass u(t,x) at x is a super-random walk and it is well-known that the process becomes extinct i…
We first introduce and derive some basic properties of a two-parameters family of one-sided Levy processes. Their Laplace exponents are given in terms of the Pochhammer symbol. This family includes, in a limit case, the family of Brownian motion with drifts. Then, we proceed by computing the density of the law of the exponential functional associated to some elements of this family (and their dual) and some transformations of these elements. These densities are expressed in terms of the Wright hypergeometric functions. By means of probabilistic arguments, we derive some interesting properties …
We consider a spatial multi-type branching model in which individuals migrate in geographic space according to random walks and reproduce according to a state-dependent branching mechanism which can be sub-, super- or critical depending on the local intensity of individuals of the different types. The model is a Lotka-Volterra type model with a spatial component and is related to two models studied in \cite{BlathEtheridgeMeredith2007} as well as to earlier work in \cite{Etheridge2004} and in \cite{NeuhauserPacala1999}. Our main focus is on the diffusion limit of small mass, locally many indivi…
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 obtain a representation of Feller's branching diffusion with logistic growth in terms of the local times of a reflected Brownian motion $H$ with a drift that is affine linear in the local time accumulated by $H$ at its current level. As in the classical Ray-Knight representation, the excursions of $H$ are the exploration paths of the trees of descendants of the ancestors at time $t=0$, and the local time of $H$ at height $t$ measures the population size at time $t$ (see e.g. \cite{LG4}). We cope with the dependence in the reproduction by introducing a pecking order of individuals: an indivi…
Many populations, e.g. of cells, bacteria, viruses, or replicating DNA molecules, start small, from a few individuals, and grow large into a noticeable fraction of the environmental carrying capacity $K$. Typically, the elements of the initiating, sparse set will not be hampering each other and their number will grow from $Z_0=z_0$ in a branching process or Malthusian like, roughly exponential fashion, $Z_t \sim a^tW$, where $Z_t$ is the size at discrete time $t\to\infty$, $a>1$ is the offspring mean per individual (at the low starting density of elements, and large $K$), and $W$ a sum of $z_0…
We discuss approximations of the relative limit densities of descendants in Galton--Watson processes that follow from the Karlin--McGregor near-constancy phenomena. These approximations are based on the fast exponentially decaying Fourier coefficients of Karlin--McGregor functions and the binomial coefficients. The approximations are sufficiently simple and show good agreement between approximate and exact values, which is demonstrated by several numerical examples.
Let X be a multi-type continuous-state branching process with immigration (CBI process) on state space $\mathbb{R}^d$. Denote by $g_t$, $t \geq 0$, the law of $X_{t}$. We provide sufficient conditions under which $g_t$ has, for each $t > 0$, a density with respect to the Lebesgue measure. Such density has, by construction, some anisotropic Besov regularity. Our approach neither relies on the use of Malliavin calculus nor on the study of corresponding Laplace transform.
