Backbone decomposition for continuous-state branching processes with immigration

In the spirit of Duquesne and Winkel (2007) and Berestycki et al. (2011), we show that supercritical continuous-state branching process with a general branching mechanism and general immigration mechanism is equivalent in law to a continuous-time Galton-Watson process with immigration (with Poissonian dressing). The result also helps to characterise the limiting backbone decomposition which is predictable from the work on consistent growth of Galton-Watson trees with immigration in Cao and Winkel (2010).     

Interacting Fisher–Wright diffusions in a catalytic medium

We study the longtime behaviour of interacting systems in a randomly fluctuating (space–time) medium and focus on models from population genetics. There are two prototypes of spatial models in population genetics: spatial branching processes and interacting Fisher–Wright diffusions. Quite a bit is known on spatial branching processes where the local branching rate is proportional to a random environment (catalytic medium). Here we introduce a model of interacting Fisher–Wright diffusions where the local resampling rate (or genetic drift) is proportional to a catalytic medium. For a particular choice of the medium, we investigate the longtime behaviour in the case of nearest neighbour migration on the d-dimensional lattice. While in classical homogeneous systems the longtime behaviour exhibits a dichotomy along the transience/recurrence properties of the migration, now a more complicated behaviour arises. It turns out that resampling models in catalytic media show phenomena that are new even compared with branching in catalytic medium. Received: 15 November 1999 / Revised version: 16 June 2000 / Published online: 6 April 2001     

Stochastic equations of non-negative processes with jumps

We study stochastic equations of non-negative processes with jumps. The existence and uniqueness of strong solutions are established under Lipschitz and non-Lipschitz conditions. Under suitable conditions, the comparison properties of solutions are proved. Those results are applied to construct continuous state branching processes with immigration as strong solutions of stochastic equations.     

The mass of super-Brownian motion upon exiting balls and Sheu’s compact support condition

We study the mass of a d$d$-dimensional super-Brownian motion as it first exits an increasing sequence of balls. The mass process is a time-inhomogeneous continuous-state branching process, where the increasing radii of the balls are taken as the time-parameter. We characterise its time-dependent branching mechanism and show that it converges, as time goes to infinity, towards the branching mechanism of the mass of a one-dimensional super-Brownian motion as it first crosses above an increasing sequence of levels.     

Blowup for the heat equation with a noise term

Summary In this paper we study blow up of the equation , where is a two-dimensional white noise field and where Dirichlet boundary conditions are enforced. It is known that if <3/2, then the solution exists for all time; in this paper we show that if is much larger than 3/2, then the solution blows up in finite time with positive probability. We prove this by considering how peaks in the solution propagate. If a peak of high mass forms, we rescale the equation and divide the mass of the peak into a collection of peaks of smaller mass, and these peaks evolve almost independently. In this way we compare the evolution ofu to a branching process. Large peaks are regarded as particles in this branching process. Offspring are peaks which are higher by some factor. We show that the expected number of offspring is greater than one when is much larger than 3/2, and thus the branching process survives with positive probability, corresponding to blowup in finite time.Supported by NSF grant DMS-9021508, NSA grant MDA904-910-H-0034, and ARO Grant MSI DAAL03-91-C-0027Supported by ONR grant N00014-91-J-1526.     

A continuous-state polynomial branching process

A continuous-state polynomial branching process is constructed as the pathwise unique solution of a stochastic integral equation with absorbing boundary condition. The process can also be obtained from a spectrally positive Lévy process through Lamperti type transformations. The extinction and explosion probabilities and the mean extinction and explosion times are computed explicitly. Some of those are also new for the classical linear branching process. We present necessary and sufficient conditions for the process to extinguish or explode in finite times. In the critical or subcritical case, we give a construction of the process coming down from infinity. Finally, it is shown that the continuous-state polynomial branching process arises naturally as the rescaled limit of a sequence of discrete-state processes.     

Stochastic p.d.e.'s arising from the long range contact and long range voter processes

Summary A long range contact process and a long range voter process are scaled so that the distance between sites decreases and the number of neighbors of each site increases. The approximate densities of occupied sites, under suitable tine scaling, converge to continuous space time densities which solve stochastic p.d.e.'s. For the contact process the limiting equation is the Kolmogorov-Petrovskii-Piscuinov equation driven by branching white noise. For the voter process the limiting equation is the heat equation driven by Fisher-Wright white noise.     

FBSDEs with time delayed generators: L-solutions, differentiability, representation formulas and path regularity

We extend the work of Delong and Imkeller (2010) [6] and [7] concerning backward stochastic differential equations with time delayed generators (delay BSDEs). We give moment and a priori estimates in general L^p-spaces and provide sufficient conditions for the solution of a delay BSDE to exist in L^p. We introduce decoupled systems of SDEs and delay BSDEs (delay FBSDEs) and give sufficient conditions for their variational differentiability. We connect these variational derivatives to the Malliavin derivatives of delay FBSDEs via the usual representation formulas. We conclude with several path regularity results, in particular we extend the classic L²-path regularity to delay FBSDEs.     

Estimation of the offspring mean in a controlled branching process with a random control function

Controlled branching processes (CBP) with a random control function provide a useful way to model generation sizes in population dynamics studies, where control on the growth of the population size is necessary at each generation. An important special case of this process is the well known branching process with immigration. Motivated by the work of Wei and Winnicki [C.Z. Wei, J. Winnicki, Estimation of the mean in the branching process with immigration, Ann. Statist. 18 (1990) 1757–1773], we develop a weighted conditional least squares estimator of the offspring mean of the CBP and derive the asymptotic limit distribution of the estimator when the process is subcritical, critical and supercritical. Moreover, we show the strong consistency of this estimator in all the cases. The results obtained here extend those of Wei and Winnicki [C.Z. Wei, J. Winnicki, Estimation of the mean in the branching process with immigration, Ann. Statist. 18 (1990) 1757–1773] for branching processes with immigration and provide a unified limit theory of estimation.     

Measure-valued branching diffusions with spatial interactions

Summary A strong equation driven by a historical Brownian motion is used to construct and characterize measure-valued branching diffusions in which the spatial motions obey an Itô equation with drift and diffusion depending on the position of an individual and the entire population.     

Extinction properties of multi-type continuous-state branching processes

Recently in Barczy et al. (2015), the notion of a multi-type continuous-state branching process (with immigration) having $d$-types was introduced as a solution to an $d$-dimensional vector-valued SDE. Preceding that, work on affine processes, originally motivated by mathematical finance, in Duffie et al. (2003) also showed the existence of such processes. See also more recent contributions in this direction due to Gabrielli and Teichmann (2014) and Caballero and Pérez Garmendia (2017). Older work on multi-type continuous-state branching processes is more sparse but includes Watanabe (1969) and Ma (2013), where only two types are considered. In this paper we take a completely different approach and consider multi-type continuous-state branching process, now allowing for up to a countable infinity of types, defined instead as a super Markov chain with both local and non-local branching mechanisms. In the spirit of Engländer and Kypriano (2004) we explore their extinction properties and pose a number of open problems.     

Asymptotic results for exponential functionals of Lévy processes

The asymptotic behavior of expectations of some exponential functionals of a Lévy process is studied. The key point is the observation that the asymptotics only depend on the sample paths with slowly decreasing local infimum. We give not only the convergence rate but also the expression of the limiting coefficient. The latter is given in terms of some transformations of the Lévy process based on its renewal function. As an application, we give an exact evaluation of the decay rate of the survival probability of a continuous-state branching process in random environment with stable branching mechanism.     

Laws of large numbers for supercritical branching Gaussian processes

A general class of non-Markov, supercritical Gaussian branching particle systems is introduced and its long-time asymptotics is studied. Both weak and strong laws of large numbers are developed with the limit object being characterized in terms of particle motion/mutation. Long memory processes, like branching fractional Brownian motion and fractional Ornstein–Uhlenbeck processes with large Hurst parameters, as well as rough processes, like fractional processes with smaller Hurst parameter, are included as important examples. General branching with second moments is allowed and moment measure techniques are utilized.     

Large scale localization of a spatial version of Neveu’s branching process

Recently a spatial version of Neveu’s (1992) continuous-state branching process was constructed by Fleischmann and Sturm (2004). This superprocess with infinite mean branching behaves quite differently from usual supercritical spatial branching processes. In fact, at macroscopic scales, the mass renormalized to a (random) probability measure is concentrated in a single space point which randomly fluctuates according to the underlying symmetric stable motion process.     

A limit theorem for trees of alleles in branching processes with rare neutral mutations

We are interested in the genealogical structure of alleles for a Bienaymé–Galton–Watson branching process with neutral mutations (infinite alleles model), in the situation where the initial population is large and the mutation rate small. We shall establish that for an appropriate regime, the process of the sizes of the allelic sub-families converges in distribution to a certain continuous state branching process (i.e. a Ji?ina process) in discrete time. Itô’s excursion theory and the Lévy–Itô decomposition of subordinators provide fundamental insights for the results.     

Convergence to equilibrium of critical branching particle systems and superprocesses,and related nonlinear partial differential equations

We consider a class of multitype particle systems in ^d undergoing spatial diffusion and critical stable multitype branching, and their limits known as critical stable multitype Dawson-Watanabe processes, or superprocesses. We show that for large classes of initial states, the particle process and the superprocess converge in distribution towards known equilibrium states as time tends to infinity. As an application we obtain the asymptotic behavior of a system of nonlinear partial differential equations whose solution is related to the distribution of both the particle process and the superprocess.Research partially supported by CONACyT (Mexico), CNRS (France) and BMfWuF (Austria).     

The reversibility and an SPDE for the generalized Fleming–Viot processes with mutation

The (Ξ,A)$(\Xi ,A)$-Fleming–Viot process with mutation is a probability-measure-valued process whose moment dual is similar to that of the classical Fleming–Viot process except that Kingman’s coalescent is replaced by the Ξ$\Xi$-coalescent, the coalescent with simultaneous multiple collisions. We first prove the existence of such a process for general mutation generator A$A$. We then investigate its reversibility. We also study both the weak and strong uniqueness of the solution to the associated stochastic partial differential equation.     

Weighted branching and a pathwise renewal equation

This paper is devoted to the study of a pathwise renewal equation for stochastic processes which are functions of a weighted tree defined in a general weighted branching model. Motivated by applications in the analysis of certain stochastic fixed-point equations and in the theory of general (Crump–Mode–Jagers) branching processes, we analyze the solutions to the equation under several conditions, the main result being a characterization of the set of solutions satisfying appropriate integrability conditions.     

Estimation of the offspring mean in a supercritical branching process with non-stationary immigration

In this paper, we consider the conditional least squares estimator (CLSE) of the offspring mean of a branching process with non-stationary immigration based on the observation of population sizes. In the supercritical case, assuming that the immigration variables follow known distributions, conditions guaranteeing the strong consistency of the proposed estimator will be derived. The asymptotic normality of the estimator will also be proved. The proofs are based on direct probabilistic arguments, unlike the previous papers, where functional limit theorems for the process were used.