Using the foundations laid down in Hardy and Harris (2006) ["A new formulation of the spine approach in branching diffusions", arXiv:math.PR/0611054], we present new spine proofs of the L^p-convergence p>=1) of some key `additive' martingales for three distinct models of branching diffusions, including new results for a multi-type branching Brownian motion and discussion of left-most particle speeds. The spine techniques we develop give clear and simple arguments in the spirit of the conceptual spine proofs found in Kyprianou (2004) ["Travelling wave solutions to the KPP equation, Ann. Inst. H. Poincare Probab. Statist. 40, no.1, pp53-72] and Lyons et al (1997) ["A conceptual proof of the Kesten-Stigum theorem for multi-type branching processes", Classical and modern branching processes, IMA Vol. Math. Appl., vol.84, Springer, New York, pp181-185], and they should also extend to more general classes of branching diffusions. Importantly, the techniques in this paper also pave the way for the path large-deviation results for branching diffusions found in Hardy and Harris (2006) ["A conceptual approach to a path result for branching Brownian motion", Stochastic Processes and their Applications, doi:10.1016/j.spa.2006.05.010].
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 …
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 consider branching random walks with a spine in the domain of attraction of an $α$-stable Lévy process. For this process, the classical derivative martingale in general degenerates in the limit. We first determine the quantity replacing the derivative martingale and show that it converges to a non-degenerate limit under a certain LlogL-type condition which we assume to be optimal. We go on to give the Seneta-Heyde norming for the critical additive martingale under the same assumptions. The proofs are based on the methods introduced in our previous paper which considered the finite variance …
We demonstrate a novel strong law of large numbers for branching processes, with a simple proof via measure-theoretic manipulations and spine theory. Roughly speaking, any sequence of events that eventually occurs almost surely for the spine entails the almost sure convergence of a certain sum over particles in the population.
In the literature, the spine decomposition of branching Markov processes was constructed under the assumption that each individual has at least one child. In this paper, we give a detailed construction of the spine decomposition of general branching Markov processes allowing the possibility of no offspring when a particle dies. Then we give some applications of the spine decomposition.
In this article we contribute to the moment analysis of branching processes in catalytic media. The many-to-few lemma based on the spine technique is used to derive a system of (discrete space) partial differential equations for the number of particles in a variation of constants formulation. The long-time behaviour is then deduced from renewal theorems and induction.
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 a martingale problem for super-Brownian motion with interactive branching is derived. The uniqueness of the solution to the martingale problem is obtained by using the pathwise uniqueness of the solution to a corresponding system of SPDEs with proper boundary conditions. The existence of the solution to the martingale problem and the Holder continuity of the density process are also studied.
We present a formalization of the spine change of measure approach for branching diffusions that improves on the scheme laid out for branching Brownian motion in Kyprianou (2004) ["Travelling wave solutions to the KPP equation, Ann. Inst. H. Poincare Probab. Statist. 40, no.1, pp53-72] which itself made use of earlier works of Lyons et al (1997) ["A conceptual proof of the Kesten-Stigum theorem for multi-type branching processes", Classical and modern branching processes, IMA Vol. Math. Appl., vol.84, Springer, New York, pp181-185]. We use our new formulation to interpret certain `Gibbs-Boltzm…
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.
Consider a real-valued branching random walk in the boundary case. Using the techniques developed by Aïdékon and Shi [5], we give two integral tests which describe respectively the lower limits for the minimal position and the upper limits for the associated additive martingale.
We consider a branching Brownian motion in $\mathbb{R}^d$. We prove that there exists a random subset $Θ$ of $\mathbb{S}^{d-1}$ such that the limit of the derivative martingale exists simultaneously for all directions $θ\in Θ$ almost surely. This allows us to define a random measure on $\mathbb{S}^{d-1}$ whose density is given by the derivative martingale. The proof is based on first moment arguments: we approximate the martingale of interest by a series of processes, which do not take into account the particles that travelled too far away. We show that these new processes are uniformly integr…
Biggins [Uniform convergence of martingales in the branching random walk. {\em Ann. Probab.}, 20(1):137--151, 1992] proved local uniform convergence of additive martingales in $d$-dimensional supercritical branching random walks at complex parameters $λ$ from an open set $Λ\subseteq \mathbb{C}^d$. We investigate the martingales corresponding to parameters from the boundary $\partial Λ$ of $Λ$. The boundary can be decomposed into several parts. There may be a part of the boundary, on which the martingales do not exist, on other parts it exists, but diverges or vanishes in the limit. In the rema…
We show uniqueness of the spine of a Fleming-Viot particle system under minimal assumptions on the driving process. If the driving process is a continuous time Markov process on a finite space, we show that asymptotically, when the number of particles goes to infinity, the branching rate for the spine is twice that of a generic particle in the system, and every side branch has the distribution of the unconditioned generic branching tree.
We consider a branching random walk on the line. Biggins and Kyprianou [6] proved that, in the boundary case, the associated derivative martingale converges almost surly to a finite nonnegative limit, whose law serves as a fixed point of a smoothing transformation (Mandelbrot's cascade). In the present paper, we give a necessary and sufficient condition for the non-triviality of this limit and establish a Kesten-Stigum-like result.
Let $W_n, n\in\mn_{0}$ be an intrinsic martingale with almost sure limit $W$ in a supercritical branching random walk. We provide criteria for the $L_p$-convergence of the series $\sum_{n\ge 0} e^{an}(W-W_n)$ for $p>1$ and $a>0$. The result may be viewed as a statement about the exponential rate of convergence of $\me |W-W_n|^p$ to zero.
A branching Lévy process can be seen as the continuous-time version of a branching random walk. It describes a particle system on the real line in which particles move and reproduce independently in a Poissonian manner. Just as for Lévy processes, the law of a branching Lévy process is determined by its characteristic triplet $(σ^2,a,Λ)$, where the branching Lévy measure $Λ$ describes the intensity of the Poisson point process of births and jumps. We establish a version of Biggins' theorem in this framework, that is we provide necessary and sufficient conditions in terms of the characteristic …
A continuous-time particle system on the real line satisfying the branching property and an exponential integrability condition is called a branching Lévy process, and its law is characterized by a triplet $(σ^2,a,Λ)$. We obtain a necessary and sufficient condition for the convergence of the derivative martingale of such a process to a non-trivial limit in terms of $(σ^2,a,Λ)$. This extends previously known results on branching Brownian motions and branching random walks. To obtain this result, we rely on the spinal decomposition and establish a novel zero-one law on the perpetual integrals of…
Let $(W_n(θ))_{n\in\mathbb N_0}$ be the Biggins martingale associated with a supercritical branching random walk and denote by $W_\infty(θ)$ its limit. Assuming essentially that the martingale $(W_n(2θ))_{n\in\mathbb N_0}$ is uniformly integrable and that $\text{Var} W_1(θ)$ is finite, we prove a functional central limit theorem for the tail process $(W_\infty(θ) - W_{n+r}(θ))_{r\in\mathbb N_0}$ and a law of the iterated logarithm for $W_\infty(θ)-W_n(θ)$, as $n\to\infty$.
In his, by now, classical work from 1981, Nerman made extensive use of a crucial martingale $(W_t)_{t \geq 0}$ to prove convergence in probability, in mean and almost surely, of supercritical general branching processes (a.k.a. Crump-Mode-Jagers branching processes) counted with a general characteristic. The martingale terminal value $W$ figures in the limits of his results. We investigate the rate at which the martingale, now called Nerman's martingale, converges to its limit $W$. More precisely, assuming the existence of a Malthusian parameter $α> 0$ and $W_0\in L^2$, we prove a functional c…
We consider a branching random walk on $\mathbb{R}$ with a stationary and ergodic environment $ξ=(ξ_n)$ indexed by time $n\in\mathbb{N}$. Let $Z_n$ be the counting measure of particles of generation $n$ and $\tilde Z_n(t)=\int e^{tx}Z_n(dx)$ be its Laplace transform. We show the $L^p$ convergence rate and the uniform convergence of the martingale $\tilde Z_n(t)/\mathbb E[\tilde Z_n(t)|ξ]$, and establish a moderate deviation principle for the measures $Z_n$.
We provide sufficient conditions which ensure that the intrinsic martingale in the supercritical branching random walk converges exponentially fast to its limit. The case of Galton-Watson processes is particularly included so that our results can be seen as a generalization of a result given in the classical treatise by Asmussen and Hering. As an auxiliary tool, we prove ultimate versions of two results concerning the exponential renewal measures which may be interesting on its own and which correct, generalize and simplify some earlier works.
Infinite sums of i.i.d. random variables discounted by a multiplicative random walk are called perpetuities and have been studied by many authors. The present paper provides a log-type moment result for such random variables under minimal conditions which is then utilized for the study of related moments of a.s. limits of certain martingales associated with the supercritical branching random walk. The connection, first observed by the second author in [Iksanov, A.M. (2004). Elementary fixed points of the BRW smoothing transforms with infinite number of summands. Stoch. Proc. Appl. 114, 27-50.]…
We give an explicit description of the law of terminal value $W$ of additive martingales in a remarkable branching stable process. We show that the right tail probability of the terminal value decays exponentially fast and the left tail probability follows that $-\log \mathbb{P}(W<x) \sim \frac{1}{2} (\log x)^2$ as $x \rightarrow 0+$. These are in sharp contrast with results in the literature such as Liu (2000, 2001) and Buraczewski (2009). We further show that the law of $W$ is self-decomposable, and therefore, possesses a unimodal density. We specify the asymptotic behavior at $0$ and at $+\…
We consider a supercritical branching process $Z_n$ in a stationary and ergodic random environment $ξ=(ξ_n)_{n\ge0}$. Due to the martingale convergence theorem, it is known that the normalized population size $W_n=Z_n/ (\mathbb E (Z_n|ξ))$ converges almost surely to a random variable $W$. We prove that if $W$ is not concentrated at $0$ or $1$ then for almost every environment $ξ$ the law of $W$ conditioned on the environment $ξ$ is absolutely continuous with a possible atom at $0$. The result generalizes considerably the main result of \cite{kaplan:1974}, and of course it covers the well-known…
We establish a second-order almost sure limit theorem for the minimal position in a one-dimensional super-critical branching random walk, and also prove a martingale convergence theorem which answers a question of Biggins and Kyprianou [9]. Our method applies furthermore to the study of directed polymers on a disordered tree. In particular, we give a rigorous proof of a phase transition phenomenon for the partition function (from the point of view of convergence in probability), already described by Derrida and Spohn [17]. Surprisingly, this phase transition phenomenon disappears in the sense …
We prove local convergence results of rerooted conditioned multi-type Galton--Watson trees. The limit objects are multitype variants of the random sin-tree constructed by Aldous (1991), and differ according to which types recur infinitely often along the backwards growing spine.
We work under the A\"ıdékon-Chen conditions which ensure that the derivative martingale in a supercritical branching random walk on the line converges almost surely to a nondegenerate nonnegative random variable that we denote by $Z$. It is shown that $\mathbb{E} Z\mathbf{1}_{\{Z\le x\}}=\log x+o(\log x)$ as $x\to\infty$. Also, we provide necessary and sufficient conditions under which $\mathbb{E} Z\mathbf{1}_{\{Z\le x\}}=\log x+{\rm const}+o(1)$ as $x\to\infty$. This more precise asymptotics is a key tool for proving distributional limit theorems which quantify the rate of convergence of the …
We study the limits of the additive and derivative martingales of one-dimensional branching Brownian motion in a periodic environment. Then we prove the existence of pulsating travelling wave solutions of the corresponding F-KPP equation in the supercritical and critical cases by representing the solutions probabilistically in terms of the limits of the additive and derivative martingales. We also prove that there is no pulsating travelling wave solution in the subcritical case. Our main tools are the spine decomposition and martingale change of measures.
Let $\mm_n, n=0,1,...$ be the supercritical branching random walk, in which the number of direct descendants of one individual may be infinite with positive probability. Assume that the standard martingale $W_n$ related to $\mm_n$ is regular, and $W$ is a limit random variable. Let $a(x)$ be a nonnegative function which regularly varies at infinity, with exponent greater than -1. The paper presents sufficient conditions of the almost sure convergence of the series $\sum_{n=1}^{\infty}a(n)(W-W_n)$. Also we establish a criterion of finiteness of $\me W\log^+ W a(\log^+W)$ and $\me \log^+|\zi| a(…
Lévy-type perpetuities being the a.s. limits of particular generalized Ornstein-Uhlenbeck processes are a natural continuous-time generalization of discrete-time perpetuities. These are random variables of the form $S:=\int_{[0,\infty)}e^{-X_{s-}}{\mathrm{d}}Z_s$, where $(X,Z)$ is a two-dimensional Lévy process, and $Z$ is a drift-free Lévy process of bounded variation. We prove an ultimate criterion for the finiteness of power moments of $S$. This result and the previously known assertion due to Erickson and Maller (2005) concerning the a.s. finiteness of $S$ are then used to derive ultimate …
Consider a supercritical superdiffusion (X_t) on a domain D subset R^d with branching mechanism -β(x) z+α(x) z^2 + int_{(0,infty)} (e^{-yz}-1+yz) Pi(x,dy). The skeleton decomposition provides a pathwise description of the process in terms of immigration along a branching particle diffusion. We use this decomposition to derive the Strong Law of Large Numbers (SLLN) for a wide class of superdiffusions from the corresponding result for branching particle diffusions. That is, we show that for suitable test functions f and starting measures mu, < f,X_t>/P_{mu}[< f,X_t>] -> W_{infty}, P_{mu}-almost …
In this paper, we provide a pathwise spine decomposition for multitype superdiffusions with non-local branching mechanisms under a martingale change of measure. As an application of this decomposition, we obtain a necessary and sufficient condition (called the $L\log L$ criterion) for the limit of the fundamental martingale to be non-degenerate. This result complements the related results for superprocesses with purely local branching mechanisms and in Kyprianou and Palau (2016) for super Markov chains.
We consider a discrete-time branching random walk in the boundary case, where the associated random walk is in the domain of attraction of an $α$-stable law with $1<α<2$. We prove that the derivative martingale $D_n$ converges to a non-trivial limit $D_\infty$ under some regular conditions. We also study the additive martingale $W_n$, and prove $n^\frac{1}αW_n$ converges in probability to a constant multiple of $D_\infty$.
This continues work started in part I on a general branching-within-branching model for host-parasite co-evolution. Here we focus on asymptotic results for relevant processes in the case when parasites survive. In particular, limit theorems for the processes of contaminated cells and of parasites are established by using martingale theory and the technique of size-biasing. The results for both processes are of Kesten-Stigum type by including equivalent integrability conditions for the martingale limits to be positive with positive probability. The case when these conditions fail is also studie…
We apply the penalization technique introduced by Roynette, Vallois, Yor for Brownian motion to Galton-Watson processes with a penalizing function of the form $P (x)s^x$ where P is a polynomial of degree p and s $\in$ [0, 1]. We prove that the limiting martingales obtained by this method are most of the time classical ones, except in the super-critical case for s = 1 (or s $\rightarrow$ 1) where we obtain new martingales. If we make a change of probability measure with this martingale, we obtain a multi-type Galton-Watson tree with p distinguished infinite spines.
In this paper we use the spine decomposition and martingale change of measure to establish a Kesten-Stigum $L\log L$ theorem for branching Hunt processes. This result is a generalization of the results in Asmussen-Hering (1976) and Hering (1978) for branching diffusions.
Consider a branching random walk in which the offspring distribution and the moving law both depend on an independent and identically distributed random environment indexed by the time.For the normalised counting measure of the number of particles of generation $n$ in a given region, we give the second and third orders asymptotic expansions of the central limit theorem under rather weak assumptions on the moments of the underlying branching and moving laws. The obtained results and the developed approaches shed light on higher order expansions. In the proofs, the Edgeworth expansion of central…
Let $(W_n(θ))_{n \in \mathbb{N}_0}$ be Biggins' martingale associated with a supercritical branching random walk, and let $W(θ)$ be its almost sure limit. Under a natural condition for the offspring point process in the branching random walk, we show that if the law of $W_1(θ)$ belongs to the domain of normal attraction of an $α$-stable distribution for some $α\in (1,2)$, then, as $n\to\infty$, there is weak convergence of the tail process $(W(θ) - W_{n-k}(θ))_{k \in \mathbb{N}_0}$, properly normalized, to a random scale multiple of a stationary autoregressive process of order one with $α$-sta…
In this paper, we study Gaussian multiplicative chaos in the critical case. We show that the so-called derivative martingale, introduced in the context of branching Brownian motions and branching random walks, converges almost surely (in all dimensions) to a random measure with full support. We also show that the limiting measure has no atom. In connection with the derivative martingale, we write explicit conjectures about the glassy phase of log-correlated Gaussian potentials and the relation with the asymptotic expansion of the maximum of log-correlated Gaussian random variables.
The long-term behavior of a supercritical branching random walk can be described and analyzed with the help of Biggins' martingales, parametrized by real or complex numbers. The study of these martingales with complex parameters is a rather recent topic. Assuming that certain sufficient conditions for the convergence of the martingales to non-degenerate limits hold, we investigate the fluctuations of the martingales around their limits. We discover three different regimes. First, we show that for parameters with small absolute values, the fluctuations are Gaussian and the limit laws are scale …
We prove necessary and sufficient conditions for the $L^p$-convergence, $p>1$, of the Biggins martingale with complex parameter in the supercritical branching random walk. The results and their proofs are much more involved (especially in the case $p\in (1,2)$) than those for the Biggins martingale with real parameter. Our conditions are ultimate in the case $p\geq 2$ only.
Branching processes $(Z_n)_{n \ge 0}$ in a varying environment generalize the Galton-Watson process, in that they allow time-dependence of the offspring distribution. Our main results concern general criteria for a.s. extinction, square-integrability of the martingale $(Z_n/\mathbf E[Z_n])_{n \ge 0}$, properties of the martingale limit $W$ and a Yaglom type result stating convergence to an exponential limit distribution of the suitably normalized population size $Z_n$, conditioned on the event $Z_n >0$. The theorems generalize/unify diverse results from the literature and lead to a classificat…
We consider the boundary case (in the sense of Biggins and Kyprianou [Electron. J. Probab. 10 (2005) 609--631] in a one-dimensional super-critical branching random walk, and study the additive martingale $(W_n)$. We prove that, upon the system's survival, $n^{1/2}W_n$ converges in probability, but not almost surely, to a positive limit. The limit is identified as a constant multiple of the almost sure limit, discovered by Biggins and Kyprianou [Adv. in Appl. Probab. 36 (2004) 544--581], of the derivative martingale.
