English

Condensation in subcritical Cauchy Bienaym\'e trees

Probability 2025-10-09 v2

Abstract

The goal of this note is to study the geometry of large size-conditioned Bienaym\'e trees whose offspring distribution is subcritical, belongs to the domain of attraction of a stable law of index α=1\alpha=1 and satisfies a local regularity assumption. We show that a condensation phenomenon occurs: one unique vertex of macroscopic degree emerges, and its height converges in distribution to a geometric random variable. Furthermore, the height of such trees grows logarithmically in their size. Interestingly, the behavior of subcritical Bienaym\'ee trees with α=1\alpha=1 is quite similar to the case α(1,2]\alpha \in( 1,2], in contrast with the critical case. This completes the study of the height of heavy-tailed size-conditioned Bienaym\'e trees. Our approach is to check that a random-walk one-big-jump principle due to Armend\'ariz & Loulakis holds, by using local estimates due to Berger, combined with the previous approach to study subcritical Bienaym\'e trees with α>1\alpha>1.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2503.07530,
  title  = {Condensation in subcritical Cauchy Bienaym\'e trees},
  author = {Igor Kortchemski and Leonard Vetter},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2503.07530},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

Final version, to appear in ECP

R2 v1 2026-06-28T22:14:23.042Z