Degrees of transience and recurrence and hierarchical random walks (Q1775581)

For a Lévy process on an Abelian group with a metric, the degree \(\gamma\) of the process is the supremum over all \(\zeta>-1\) such that the operator power \(G^{\zeta+1}\) of the Green operator of the process is finite. If \(\gamma\) is positive, it is called degree of transience, if \(\gamma\) is negative, \(-\gamma\) is called degree of recurrence. The first part of the paper is devoted to a study of these notions. The second part deals with the behavior of random walks on a hierarchical group, depending on the degrees of the walks. The ultrametric structure of the group has an important part on the behavior of these hierarchical random walks. Analogies and differences with Euclidean random walks are discussed. Applications of the results are mentioned to separation of time scales and occupation times of multilevel branching systems. These applications play a basic role in the paper by the same authors [Electron. J. Probab. 9, Paper No. 12, 316--381 (2004; Zbl 1076.60073)].