Diffusion limited aggregation on a tree

Abstract

We study the following growth model on a regular d-ary tree. Points at distance n adjacent to the existing subtree are added with probabilities proportional to alpha^{-n}, where alpha<1 is a positive real parameter. The heights of these clusters are shown to increase linearly with their total size; this complements known results that show the height increases only logarithmically when alpha>=1. Results are obtained using stochastic monotonicity and regeneration results which may be of independent interest. Our motivation comes from two other ways in which the model may be viewed: as a problem in first-passage percolation, and as a version of diffusion-limited aggregation (DLA), adjusted so that `fingering' occurs.