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 Probability Surveys > Vol. 4 (2007) open journal systems 


Branching diffusions, superdiffusions and random media

János Engländer, UC Santa Barbara


Abstract
Spatial branching processes became increasingly popular in the past decades, not only because of their obvious connection to biology, but also because superprocesses are intimately related to nonlinear partial differential equations. Another hot topic in today's research in probability theory is `random media', including the now classical problems on `Brownian motion among obstacles' and the more recent `random walks in random environment' and `catalytic branching' models. These notes aim to give a gentle introduction into some topics in spatial branching processes and superprocesses in deterministic environments (sections 2-6) and in random media (sections 7-11).

AMS 2000 subject classifications: Primary 60J60; secondary 60J80.

Keywords: spatial branching processes, branching diffusions, measure-valued processes, superprocesses, catalytic branching, Law of Large Numbers, spine decomposition, nonlinear $h$-transform, local extinction, compact support property, mild obstacles, random media, random environment, second order elliptic operators, criticality theory.

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Engländer, János, Branching diffusions, superdiffusions and random media, Probability Surveys, 4, (2007), 303-364 (electronic). DOI: 10.1214/07-PS120.

References

   

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3. Connection between spatial branching processes and nonlinear partial differential equations; the qualitative behavior of superprocesses

 

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5. The Law of Large Numbers for spatial branching processes and superprocesses

 

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7. Classical problems for random media: Brownian motion among Poissonian obstacles and related topics

 

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8. Spatial branching processes among Poissonian obstacles: hard obstacles

 

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9. Spatial branching processes among Poissonian obstacles: ‘mild’ obstacles

 

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10. Generalizations and open problems for mild obstacles

 

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11. Some catalytic branching problems

 

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