Differentiability of the speed of biased random walks on Galton-Watson trees

Abstract

We prove that the speed of a $\lambda$-biased random walk on a supercritical Galton-Watson tree is differentiable for $\lambda$ such that the walk is ballistic and obeys a central limit theorem, and give an expression of the derivative using a certain $2$-dimensional Gaussian random variable. The proof heavily uses the renewal structure of Galton-Watson trees that was introduced by Lyons-Pemantle-Peres.

33 pages, 1 figure