Quasi-stationary regime of a branching random walk in presence of an absorbing wall

TL;DR

This paper investigates the behavior of a branching random walk near an absorbing wall, revealing universal properties of the quasi-stationary regime as the wall's velocity approaches a critical value, through exact solutions and stochastic process construction.

Contribution

It introduces a method to analyze the quasi-stationary regime of branching random walks conditioned on survival, demonstrating universality near the critical velocity and providing exact solutions for a simplified model.

Findings

The quasi-stationary regime exhibits universal properties as the wall velocity approaches the critical value.

A modified stochastic process can be constructed to study the conditioned population dynamics.

Exact solutions are obtained for a simplified exponential model of the problem.

Abstract

A branching random walk in presence of an absorbing wall moving at a constant velocity $v$ undergoes a phase transition as the velocity $v$ of the wall varies. Below the critical velocity $v_c$, the population has a non-zero survival probability and when the population survives its size grows exponentially. We investigate the histories of the population conditioned on having a single survivor at some final time $T$. We study the quasi-stationary regime for $v<v_c$ when $T$ is large. To do so, one can construct a modified stochastic process which is equivalent to the original process conditioned on having a single survivor at final time $T$. We then use this construction to show that the properties of the quasi-stationary regime are universal when $v\to v_c$. We also solve exactly a simple version of the problem, the exponential model, for which the study of the quasi-stationary regime can be reduced to the analysis of a single one-dimensional map.