Pruning Galton-Watson Trees and Tree-valued Markov Processes

We present a new pruning procedure on discrete trees by adding marks on the nodes of trees. This procedure allows us to construct and study a tree-valued Markov process $\{{\cal G}(u)\}$ by pruning Galton-Watson trees and an analogous process $\{{\cal G}^*(u)\}$ by pruning a critical or subcritical Galton-Watson tree conditioned to be infinite. Under a mild condition on offspring distributions, we show that the process $\{{\cal G}(u)\}$ run until its ascension time has a representation in terms of $\{{\cal G}^*(u)\}$. A similar result was obtained by Aldous and Pitman (1998) in the special case of Poisson offspring distributions where they considered uniform pruning of Galton-Watson trees by adding marks on the edges of trees

Limit theorems for Markov processes indexed by continuous time Galton--Watson trees

We study the evolution of a particle system whose genealogy is given by a supercritical continuous time Galton--Watson tree. The particles move independently according to a Markov process and when a branching event occurs, the offspring locations depend on the position of the mother and the number of offspring. We prove a law of large numbers for the empirical measure of individuals alive at time t. This relies on a probabilistic interpretation of its intensity by mean of an auxiliary process. The latter has the same generator as the Markov process along the branches plus additional jumps, associated with branching events of accelerated rate and biased distribution. This comes from the fact that choosing an individual uniformly at time t favors lineages with more branching events and larger offspring number. The central limit theorem is considered on a special case. Several examples are developed, including applications to splitting diffusions, cellular aging, branching L\'{e}vy processes.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/10-AAP757 the Annals of Applied Probability (http://www.imstat.org/aap/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Routing on trees

We consider three different schemes for signal routing on a tree. The vertices of the tree represent transceivers that can transmit and receive signals, and are equipped with i.i.d. weights representing the strength of the transceivers. The edges of the tree are also equipped with i.i.d. weights, representing the costs for passing the edges. For each one of our schemes, we derive sharp conditions on the distributions of the vertex weights and the edge weights that determine when the root can transmit a signal over arbitrarily large distances

A survey of max-type recursive distributional equations

In certain problems in a variety of applied probability settings (from probabilistic analysis of algorithms to statistical physics), the central requirement is to solve a recursive distributional equation of the form X =^d g((\xi_i,X_i),i\geq 1). Here (\xi_i) and g(\cdot) are given and the X_i are independent copies of the unknown distribution X. We survey this area, emphasizing examples where the function g(\cdot) is essentially a ``maximum'' or ``minimum'' function. We draw attention to the theoretical question of endogeny: in the associated recursive tree process X_i, are the X_i measurable functions of the innovations process (\xi_i)?Comment: Published at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/105051605000000142 in the Annals of Applied Probability (http://www.imstat.org/aap/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Invariance principles for pruning processes of Galton-Watson trees

Pruning processes $(\mathcal{F}(\theta),\theta\geq 0)$ have been studied separately for Galton-Watson trees and for L\'evy trees/forests. We establish here a limit theory that strongly connects the two studies. This solves an open problem by Abraham and Delmas, also formulated as a conjecture by L\"ohr, Voisin and Winter. Specifically, we show that for any sequence of Galton-Watson forests $\mathcal{F}_n$, $n\geq 1$, in the domain of attraction of a L\'evy forest $\mathcal{F}$, suitably scaled pruning processes $(\mathcal{F}_n(\theta),\theta\geq 0)$ converge in the Skorohod topology on cadlag functions with values in the space of (isometry classes of) locally compact real trees to limiting pruning processes. We separately treat pruning at branch points and pruning at edges. We apply our results to study ascension times and Kesten trees and forests.Comment: 33 page