Weak extinction versus global exponential growth of total mass for superdiffusions

TL;DR

This paper investigates the long-term growth or decay of superdiffusions in relation to the spectral properties of associated operators, extending previous results by analyzing the total mass behavior and extinction conditions.

Contribution

It establishes the connection between the $L^ abla$-growth bound $ ext{lambda}_ extinfty$ and the exponential growth rate of the superdiffusion's total mass, complementing prior local growth results.

Findings

Exponential growth/decay rate of total mass equals $ ext{lambda}_ extinfty$ when $ ext{lambda}_ extinfty eq 0$.

Characterization of the limiting behavior of the total mass scaled by $ ext{lambda}_ extinfty$.

Conditions under which weak extinction occurs, influenced by the branching intensity $k$.

Abstract

Consider a superdiffusion $X$ on $\mathbb R^d$ corresponding to the semilinear operator $\mathcal{A}(u)=Lu+\beta u-ku^2,$ where $L$ is a second order elliptic operator, $\beta(\cdot)$ is in the Kato class and bounded from above, and $k(\cdot)\ge 0$ is bounded on compact subsets of $\R^d$ and is positive on a set of positive Lebesgue measure. The main purpose of this paper is to complement the results obtained in \cite{Englander:2004}, in the following sense. Let $\lambda_\infty $ be the $L^\infty$-growth bound of the semigroup corresponding to the Schr\"odinger operator $L+\beta $. If $\lambda_\infty \neq0$, then we prove that, in some sense, the exponential growth/decay rate of $\|X_t\|$, the total mass of $X_t$, is $\lambda_\infty $. We also describe the limiting behavior of $\exp(-\lambda_\infty t)\|X_t\|$ in these cases. This should be compared to the result in \cite{Englander:2004}, which says that the generalized principal eigenvalue $\lambda_2$ of the operator gives the rate of {\it local} growth when it is positive, and implies local extinction otherwise. It is easy to show that $\lambda_{\infty}\ge \lambda_2$, and we discuss cases when $\lambda_{\infty}> \lambda_2$ and when $\lambda_{\infty}= \lambda_2$. When $\lambda_\infty =0$, and under some conditions on $\beta$, we give a sufficient and necessary condition for the superdiffusion $X$ to exhibit weak extinction. We show that the branching intensity $k$ affects weak extinction; this should be compared to the known result that $k$ does not affect weak {\it local} extinction (which only depends on the sign of $\lambda_2$, and which turns out to be equivalent to local extinction) of $X$.