Finite time extinction of super-Brownian motions with catalysts

Abstract

Consider a catalytic super-Brownian motion $X=X^\Gamma$ with finite variance branching. Here `catalytic' means that branching of the reactant $X$ is only possible in the presence of some catalyst. Our intrinsic example of a catalyst is a stable random measure $\Gamma $ on $R$ of index $0< gamma <1$. Consequently, here the catalyst is located in a countable dense subset of $R$. Starting with a finite reactant mass $X_0$ supported by a compact set, $X$ is shown to die in finite time. Our probabilistic argument uses the idea of good and bad historical paths of reactant `particles' during time periods $[T_{n},T_{n+1})$. Good paths have a significant collision local time with the catalyst, and extinction can be shown by individual time change according to the collision local time and a comparison with Feller's branching diffusion. On the other hand, the remaining bad paths are shown to have a small expected mass at time $T_{n+1}$ which can be controlled by the hitting probability of point catalysts and the collision local time spent on them.