Reinforced Galton-Watson processes I: Malthusian exponents
Abstract
In a reinforced Galton-Watson process with reproduction law and memory parameter q∈(0,1), the number of children of a typical individual either, with probability q, repeats that of one of its forebears picked uniformly at random, or, with complementary probability 1-q, is given by an independent sample from . We estimate the average size of the population at a large generation, and in particular, we determine explicitly the Malthusian growth rate in terms of and q. Our approach via the analysis of transport equations owns much to works by Flajolet and co-authors.
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