Convergence in $L^p$ and its exponential rate for a branching process in a random environment

TL;DR

This paper establishes necessary and sufficient conditions for $L^p$ convergence and its exponential rate in a supercritical branching process within a random environment, advancing understanding of convergence behaviors.

Contribution

It provides a complete characterization of quenched $L^p$ convergence conditions and determines the exponential convergence rate, extending prior results to both quenched and annealed settings.

Findings

Necessary and sufficient condition for quenched $L^p$ convergence.

Exponential convergence rate and maximal $ ho$ for convergence.

Results applicable to branching processes in varying environments.

Abstract

We consider a supercritical branching process $(Z_n)$ in a random environment $\xi$. Let $W$ be the limit of the normalized population size $W_n=Z_n/E[Z_n|\xi]$. We first show a necessary and sufficient condition for the quenched $L^p$ ($p>1$) convergence of $(W_n)$, which completes the known result for the annealed $L^p$ convergence. We then show that the convergence rate is exponential, and we find the maximal value of $\rho>1$ such that $\rho^n(W-W_n)\rightarrow 0$ in $L^p$, in both quenched and annealed sense. Similar results are also shown for a branching process in a varying environment.