Infinitely ramified point measures and branching Lévy processes

Abstract

We call a random point measure infinitely ramified if for every $n\in \mathbb N$, it has the same distribution as the $n$-th generation of some branching random walk. On the other hand, branching L\'evy processes model the evolution of a population in continuous time, such that individuals move in space independently, according to some L\'evy process, and further beget progenies according to some Poissonian dynamics, possibly on an everywhere dense set of times. Our main result connects these two classes of processes much in the same way as in the case of infinitely divisible distributions and L\'evy processes: the value at time $1$ of a branching L\'evy process is an infinitely ramified point measure, and conversely, any infinitely ramified point measure can be obtained as the value at time $1$ of some branching L\'evy process.