Rate of expansion of an inhomogeneous branching process of brownian particles

Summary Let X be the (B ⁰, {q _n (x)})-branching diffusion where B ⁰is the exp -subprocess of BM(R¹) and q _n (x) is the probability that a particle dying at x produces n offspring, q ₀ q ₁0. Put m(x) = nq _n (x). We assume q _n , n2, m and k are all continuous (but m is not necessarily bounded). If k(x)m(x)0 as ¦x¦, then we prove that R _t /t( ₂/2)^1/2, as t, a.s. and in mean (of any order) where R _t is the position of the rightmost particle at time t and ₀ is the largest eigenvalue of (1/2)d ²/dx ² + Q, Q(x) = k(x)(m(x)–1).This work was supported in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation # MCS-8201470.