A branching particle system as a model of semipushed fronts

Abstract

We consider a system of particles performing a one-dimensional dyadic branching Brownian motion with space-dependent branching rate, negative drift $-\mu$ and killed upon reaching $0$, starting with $N$ particles. More precisely, particles branch at rate $\rho/2$ in the interval $[0,1]$, for some $\rho>1$, and at rate $1/2$ in $(1,+\infty)$. The drift $\mu(\rho)$ is chosen in such a way that, heuristically, the system is critical in some sense: the number of particles stays roughly constant before it eventually dies out. This particle system can be seen as an analytically tractable model for fluctuating fronts, describing the internal mechanisms driving the invasion of a habitat by a cooperating population. Recent studies from Birzu, Hallatschek and Korolev suggest the existence of three classes of fluctuating fronts: pulled, semipushed and pushed fronts. Here, we rigorously verify and make precise this classification and focus on the semipushed regime. More precisely, we prove the existence of two critical values $1<\rho_1<\rho_2$ such that for all $\rho\in(\rho_1,\rho_2)$, there exists $\alpha(\rho)\in(1,2)$ such that the rescaled number of particles in the system converges to an $\alpha$-stable continuous-state branching process on the time scale $N^{\alpha-1}$ as $N$ goes to infinity. This complements previous results from Berestycki, Berestycki and Schweinsberg for the case $\rho=1$.