The survival probability of a branching random walk in presence of an absorbing wall

Abstract

A branching random walk in presence of an absorbing wall moving at a constant velocity v undergoes a phase transition as v varies. The problem can be analyzed using the properties of the Fisher-Kolmogorov-Petrovsky-Piscounov (F-KPP) equation. We find that the survival probability of the branching random walk vanishes at a critical velocity vc of the wall with an essential singularity and we characterize the divergences of the relaxation times for v<vc and v>vc. At v=vc the survival probability decays like a stretched exponential. Using the F-KPP equation, one can also calculate the distribution of the population size at time t conditioned by the survival of one individual at a later time T>t. Our numerical results indicate that the size of the population diverges like the exponential of (vc−v)−1/2 in the quasi-stationary regime below vc. Moreover for v>vc, our data indicate that there is no quasi-stationary regime.