Large Unicellular maps in high genus

We study the geometry of a random unicellular map which is uniformly distributed on the set of all unicellular maps whose genus size is proportional to the number of edges of the map. We prove that the distance between two uniformly selected vertices of such a map is of order $\log n$ and the diameter is also of order $\log n$ with high probability. We further prove that the map is locally planar with high probability. The main ingredient of the proofs is an exploration procedure which uses a bijection due to Chapuy, Feray and Fusy.Comment: 43 pages, 6 figures, revised file taking into account referee's comment

A decorated tree approach to random permutations in substitution-closed classes

We establish a novel bijective encoding that represents permutations as forests of decorated (or enriched) trees. This allows us to prove local convergence of uniform random permutations from substitution-closed classes satisfying a criticality constraint. It also enables us to reprove and strengthen permuton limits for these classes in a new way, that uses a semi-local version of Aldous' skeleton decomposition for size-constrained Galton--Watson trees.Comment: New version including referee's corrections, accepted for publication in Electronic Journal of Probabilit

Random enriched trees with applications to random graphs

We establish limit theorems that describe the asymptotic local and global geometric behaviour of random enriched trees considered up to symmetry. We apply these general results to random unlabelled weighted rooted graphs and uniform random unlabelled $k$-trees that are rooted at a $k$-clique of distinguishable vertices. For both models we establish a Gromov--Hausdorff scaling limit, a Benjamini--Schramm limit, and a local weak limit that describes the asymptotic shape near the fixed root

Cutting down trees with a Markov chainsaw

We provide simplified proofs for the asymptotic distribution of the number of cuts required to cut down a Galton-Watson tree with critical, finite-variance offspring distribution, conditioned to have total progeny $n$. Our proof is based on a coupling which yields a precise, nonasymptotic distributional result for the case of uniformly random rooted labeled trees (or, equivalently, Poisson Galton-Watson trees conditioned on their size). Our approach also provides a new, random reversible transformation between Brownian excursion and Brownian bridge.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/13-AAP978 the Annals of Applied Probability (http://www.imstat.org/aap/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

A branching process with coalescence to model random phylogenetic networks

We introduce a biologically natural, mathematically tractable model of random phylogenetic network to describe evolution in the presence of hybridization. One of the features of this model is that the hybridization rate of the lineages correlates negatively with their phylogenetic distance. We give formulas / characterizations for quantities of biological interest that make them straightforward to compute in practice. We show that the appropriately rescaled network, seen as a metric space, converges to the Brownian continuum random tree, and that the uniformly rooted network has a local weak limit, which we describe explicitly