First Order Probabilities For Galton-Watson Trees

Abstract

In the regime of Galton-Watson trees, first order logic statements are roughly equivalent to examining the presence of specific finite subtrees. We consider the space of all trees with Poisson offspring distribution and show that such finite subtrees will be almost surely present when the tree is infinite. Introducing the notion of universal trees, we show that all first order sentences of quantifier depth $k$ depend only on local neighbourhoods of the root of sufficiently large radius depending on $k$. We compute the probabilities of these neighbourhoods conditioned on the tree being infinite. We give an almost sure theory for infinite trees.

This is the version after our paper got accepted for publication in A Journey Through Discrete Mathematics : A Tribute to Jiří Matoušek; editors: Loebl, Martin, Nesetril, Jaroslav, Thomas, Robin; published by Springer International Publishing, Year - 2017