Geometric branching process: time to extinction

We revisit the problem of Brownian diffusion with drift in order to study finite-size effects in the geometric Galton-Watson branching process. This is possible because of an exact mapping between one-dimensional random walks and geometric branching processes, known as the Harris walk. In this way, first-passage times of Brownian particles are equivalent to sizes of trees in the branching process (up to a factor of proportionality). Brownian particles that reach a distant reflecting boundary correspond to percolating trees, and those that do not correspond to nonpercolating trees. In fact, both systems display a second-order phase transition between "conducting" and "insulating" phases, controlled by the drift velocity in the Brownian system. In the limit of large system size, we obtain exact expressions for the Laplace transforms of the probability distributions and their first and second moments. These quantities are also shown to obey finite-size scaling laws.

The factorial moments of any Markov branching process describe the behaviour of its probability generating function $F(t,s)$ in the neighbourhood of the point $s=1$. They are applied to solve the forward Kolmogorov equation for the critical Markov branching process with geometric reproduction of particles. The solution includes quickly convergent recurrent iterations of polynomials. The obtained results on factorial moments enable computation of statistical measures as shape and skewness. They are also applicable to the comparison between critical geometric branching and linear birth-death processes.

The Tokunaga condition is an algebraic rule that provides a detailed description of the branching structure in a self-similar tree. Despite a solid empirical validation and practical convenience, the Tokunaga condition lacks a theoretical justification. Such a justification is suggested in this work. We define a geometric branching process G(s) that generates self-similar rooted trees. The main result establishes the equivalence between the invariance of G(s) with respect to a time shift and a one-parametric version of the Tokunaga condition. In the parameter region where the process satisfies the Tokunaga condition (and hence is time invariant), G(s) enjoys many of the symmetries observed in a critical binary Galton-Watson branching process and reproduces the latter for a particular parameter value.

The theory of finite-size scaling explains how the singular behavior of thermodynamic quantities in the critical point of a phase transition emerges when the size of the system becomes infinite. Usually, this theory is presented in a phenomenological way. Here, we exactly demonstrate the existence of a finite-size scaling law for the Galton-Watson branching processes when the number of offsprings of each individual follows either a geometric distribution or a generalized geometric distribution. We also derive the corrections to scaling and the limits of validity of the finite-size scaling law away the critical point. A mapping between branching processes and random walks allows us to establish that these results also hold for the latter case, for which the order parameter turns out to be the probability of hitting a distant boundary.

We review combinatorial properties of solitons of the Box-Ball system introduced by Takahashi and Satsuma (J Phys Soc Jpn 59(10):3514–3519, 1990). Starting with several definitions of the system, we describe ways to identify solitons and review a proof of the conservation of the solitons under the dynamics. Ferrari et al. (Soliton decomposition of the box-ball system (2018). arXiv:1806.02798) proposed a soliton decomposition of a configuration into a family of vectors, one for each soliton size. Based on this decompositions, the authors (Ferrari and Gabrielli, Electron. J. Probab. 25, Paper No. 78–1, 2020) propose a family of measures on the set of excursions which induces invariant distributions for the Box-Ball System. In the present paper, we propose a new soliton decomposition which is equivalent to a branch decomposition of the tree associated to the excursion, see Le Gall (Une approche élémentaire des théorèmes de décomposition de Williams. In: Séminaire de Probabilités, XX, 1984/85, vol. 1204, pp. 447–464. Lecture Notes in Mathematics. Springer, Berlin (1986)). A ball configuration distributed as independent Bernoulli variables of parameter λ < 1∕2 is in correspondence with a simple random walk with negative drift 2λ − 1 and having infinitely many excursions over the local minima. In this case the soliton decomposition of the walk consists on independent double-infinite vectors of iid geometric random variables (Ferrari and Gabrielli, Electron. J. Probab. 25, Paper No. 78–1, 2020). We show that this property is shared by the branch decomposition of the excursion trees of the random walk and discuss a corresponding construction of a Geometric branching process with independent but not identically distributed Geometric random variables.

A summation formula is given for computing the spectrum of intervals of a geometric branching Poisson process from the cumulant generating function of the associated counting process.

A summation formula is given for computing the spectrum of intervals of a geometric branching Poisson process from the cumulant generating function of the associated counting process.

Mathematical modeling of dendritic growth in vitro

Slower variation of the generation sizes induced by heavy-tailed environment for geometric branching