English

Total progeny in killed branching random walk

Probability 2009-08-10 v1

Abstract

We consider a branching random walk for which the maximum position of a particle in the n'th generation, M_n, has zero speed on the linear scale: M_n/n --> 0 as n --> infinity. We further remove ("kill") any particle whose displacement is negative, together with its entire descendence. The size ZZ of the set of un-killed particles is almost surely finite. In this paper, we confirm a conjecture of Aldous that Exp[Z] < infinity while Exp[Z log Z]=infinity. The proofs rely on precise large deviations estimates and ballot theorem-style results for the sample paths of random walks.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0908.1083,
  title  = {Total progeny in killed branching random walk},
  author = {Louigi Addario-Berry and Nicolas Broutin},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0908.1083},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

21 pages, 1 figure

R2 v1 2026-06-21T13:33:30.760Z