Random walks, capacity and percolation on trees (Q1203667)

Technically at the heart of this paper there are closely related inequalities for the crossing probabilities of random walks and percolation on trees. They are first proved by elementary algebraic methods. Then an equivalent formulation based on capacity is given, extending a result of A. H. Fan on random interval coverings. It is applied to generalize S. N. Evans' result on random labeling of trees. The correspondence between random walks and percolation is used to decide whether certain random walks on trees are transient or recurrent almost surely. Finally, several new results on branching processes in varying environment are obtained.