On the derivative martingale in a branching random walk

Abstract

We work under the A\"ıdékon-Chen conditions which ensure that the derivative martingale in a supercritical branching random walk on the line converges almost surely to a nondegenerate nonnegative random variable that we denote by $Z$. It is shown that $\mathbb{E}Z{1}_{\{Z\le x\}}=\log x+o(\log x)$ as $x\to \infty$. Also, we provide necessary and sufficient conditions under which $\mathbb{E}Z{1}_{\{Z\le x\}}=\log x+\mathrm{const}+o(1)$ as $x\to \infty$. This more precise asymptotics is a key tool for proving distributional limit theorems which quantify the rate of convergence of the derivative martingale to its limit $Z$. The methodological novelty of the present paper is a three terms representation of a subharmonic function of at most linear growth for a killed centered random walk of finite variance. This yields the aforementioned asymptotics and should also be applicable to other models.