Brownian excursions, trees and measure-valued branching processes (Q1180563)

Measure-valued branching processes, also called superprocesses, arise as limits of branching particle systems. An important example is the continuous super-Brownian motion and this process has been intensively studied in recent years. In the present paper an ingeneous new construction of this process is given. This construction is based on a description of the underlying branching mechanism of the superprocess in terms of the tree structure of a Poisson process of Brownian excursions. In addition this also allows the construction of the historical process also studied by \textit{D. A. Dawson} and \textit{E. A. Perkins} [Mem. Am. Math. Soc. 454 (1991)] and \textit{E. B. Dynkin} [Probab. Theory Relat. Fields 90, No. 1, 1-36 (1991; Zbl 0727.60095)]. Several applications of this new construction are also given. One application is a derivation of the Palm measure of the fixed time random measure which is also obtained by Dawson and Perkins (loc. cit). In addition a probabilistic description of the historical process at a fixed time is obtained in terms of an infinite binary tree which describes the ``family structure''. Another application is to the study of the discontinuities of the support of super-Brownian motion including a new proof of a result of \textit{E. Perkins} [Ann. Probab. 18, No. 2, 453-491 (1990; Zbl 0721.60046)]. To conclude this new construction promises to provide an important tool for the study of superprocesses.