English

Biased random walks on a Galton-Watson tree with leaves

Probability 2010-11-18 v4

Abstract

We consider a biased random walk XnX_n on a Galton-Watson tree with leaves in the sub-ballistic regime. We prove that there exists an explicit constant γ=γ(β)(0,1)\gamma= \gamma(\beta) \in (0,1), depending on the bias β\beta, such that XnX_n is of order nγn^{\gamma}. Denoting Δn\Delta_n the hitting time of level nn, we prove that Δn/n1/γ\Delta_n/n^{1/\gamma} is tight. Moreover we show that Δn/n1/γ\Delta_n/n^{1/\gamma} does not converge in law (at least for large values of β\beta). We prove that along the sequences nλ(k)=λβγkn_{\lambda}(k)=\lfloor \lambda \beta^{\gamma k}\rfloor, Δn/n1/γ\Delta_n/n^{1/\gamma} converges to certain infinitely divisible laws. Key tools for the proof are the classical Harris decomposition for Galton-Watson trees, a new variant of regeneration times and the careful analysis of triangular arrays of i.i.d. heavy-tailed random variables.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0711.3686,
  title  = {Biased random walks on a Galton-Watson tree with leaves},
  author = {Gérard Ben Arous and Alexander Fribergh and Nina Gantert and Alan Hammond},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0711.3686},
  year   = {2010}
}

Comments

49 pages, 2 figures. To appear in Ann. Probab