A limit law for the most favorite point of simple random walk on a regular tree

Abstract

We consider a continuous-time random walk on a regular tree of finite depth and study its favorite points among the leaf vertices. For the walk started from a leaf vertex and stopped upon hitting the root we prove that, in the limit as as the depth of the tree tends to infinity, the suitably scaled and centered maximal time spent at any leaf converges to a randomly-shifted Gumbel law. The random shift is characterized using a derivative-martingale like object associated with square-root local-time process on the tree.