Recurrence and capacity of stable branching random walks

Abstract

We study the linear growth rate of the range of size-conditioned Branching Random Walks (BRW) when the offspring distribution $\mu$ is critical and attracted to an $\alpha$-stable law. This is done via the infinite invariant BRW introduced by Le Gall & Lin and a new criterion which relates this growth rate of the range to a notion of dimension of the underlying tree in a general way. Then, in the transient case (that is, when the range does grow linearly), we extend the notion of branching capacity to this $\alpha$-stable case. We show that it is still related to the asymptotic probability that a BRW (or its infinite version) reaches a distant set in ${\mathbb{Z}}^d$, and we estimate the $\alpha$-stable branching capacity of balls.

36 pages, 6 figures