Capacity of the range of tree-indexed random walk (Q2170353)

The paper starts with a branching random walk in discrete time and space. The process starts with a single particle at \(\vec{0}\in \mathbb{Z}^{d}\). At each time step the particles die and independently generate offspring according to law \(\mu\). Each descendant moves away from its parent's location according to law \(\theta\). The process is considered in the critical regime, i.e., when the mean progeny number is \(1\). Such a process almost surely dies out, and hence the \textit{range}, \(R\), the set of visited points in \(\mathbb{Z}^{d}\), is almost surely finite. Furthermore, assume that the offspring number (under \(\mu\)) has finite variance, and \(\mu\) is not the trivial Dirac \(\delta\) at \(1\). The displacement law, \(\theta\), is assumed to be symmetric, aperiodic, irreducible, and such that \(\mathrm{E}[e^{\sqrt{\vert \vec{S} \vert}}]<\infty\), where \(\mathbb{Z}^{d} \ni \vec{S}\) is the displacement from \(\vec{0}\) under law \(\theta\). Let now \(\eta\) be an aperiodic, irreducible, mean \(0\), and finite \((d+1)\)th moment probability distribution on \(\mathbb{Z}^{d}\). Further, let \(P^{\eta}_{\vec{x}}\) be the law of a random walk, \(\vec{S}_{n}\in \mathbb{Z}^{d}\), started at \(\vec{x}\) with transition law \(\eta\), and for \(A\subset \mathbb{Z}^{d}\) define \[ \tau_{A}^{+} = \inf\{n\geq 1:\vec{S}_{n}\in A \} \] to be the time of \(\vec{S}_{n}\)'s first return to \(A\). Define the capacity, with respect to \(\eta\), of a finite set \(A\subset \mathbb{Z}^{d}\) as \[ \mathtt{cap}_{\eta}A:=\sum\limits_{\vec{x}\in A}P^{\eta}_{\vec{x}}(\tau_{A}^{+}=\infty). \] The authors look into the properties of the capacity with respect to \(\eta\) of the range, \(R\), conditioned on the event that the branching random walk generates exactly \(n\) particles before dying out. It is shown that if \(d\geq 6\), then \(a_{n}\mathtt{cap}_{\eta}R\) converges in probability to a constant. This constant depends on \(d\), \(\mu\), \(\theta\) and \(\eta\). If \(d\geq 7\), then \(a_{n}=n^{-1}\), while if \(d=6\), then \(a_{n}=n^{-1}\log n\).