paper

The critical Galton-Watson process vanishes

arXiv:1610.02866

Abstract

The Galton-Watson process belongs to standard teaching in probability. The basic theorem says that survival is only possible when the fecondity exceeds 1. The classical proof is essentially analytic, using generating functions and convexity arguments. We give here a more probabilistic proof, in the spirit of Bezuidenhout and Grimmett.

in French