Asymptotic behavior of the two level measure branching process (Q1336569)

A two level measure branching process is a diffusion limit of a two level branching particle system where particles are subject to random motion in \(\mathbb{R}^ d\) and binary branching, and collections of particles undergo an independent binary branching mechanism. The author studies the long time behavior of the two level measure branching process \(Y\) in the case of Brownian motion and critical branching at the two levels. The main results of the paper are: 1) For certain classes of initial states, if \(d \leq 4\), then \(Y(t)\) suffers local extinction as \(t \to \infty\) (this result was conjectured by Dawson and it should be compared with the one for the one level model: local extinction holds if \(d \leq 2)\). 2) If \(d = 4\) and the initial state is the equilibrium measure of the one level measure branching process (this equilibrium measure exists if \(d \geq 3)\), then \(Y(t)\) is selfsimilar. The methods of proof make extensive use of the nonlinear initial value problems associated with the meaure branching processes.