Branching Random Walks in a Random Killing Environment with a Single Reproduction Source

Abstract

We consider a continuous-time branching random walk on Z in a random non-homogeneous environment. The process starts with a single particle at initial time t=0. This particle can walk on the lattice points or disappear with a random intensity until it reaches the certain point, which we call the reproduction source. At the source, the particle can split into two offspring or jump out of the source. The offspring of the initial particle evolves according to the same law, independently of each other and the entire prehistory. The aim of this paper is to study the conditions for the presence of exponential growth of the average number of particles at every lattice point. For this purpose, we investigate the spectrum of the random evolution operator of the average particle numbers. We derive the condition under which there is exponential growth with probability one. We also study the process under the violation of this condition and present the lower and upper estimates for the probability of exponential growth.

Keywords

• branching processes
• random walks
• branching random walks
• random environments