Tree lengths for general \(\Lambda \)-coalescents and the asymptotic site frequency spectrum around the Bolthausen-Sznitman coalescent (Q2286448)

The authors investigate \(\Lambda\)-coalescents without dust component. The latter means that the driving measure \(\Lambda\) satisfies \(\int_{[0,1]}x^{-1}\Lambda(dx)=\infty\). The objects in focus are (a) the total length; (b) the total external length; (c) the total internal length; (d) the total length of all internal branches carrying a subtree with \(a\) leaves (\(a\geq 1\)) of the coalescent tree with \(n\) vertices at the last level. For the object (a), a strong law of large numbers, as \(n\to\infty\), is established. For the object (b), a weak law of large numbers, as \(n\to\infty\), is proved. For the objects (c,d), a strong law of large numbers, as \(n\to\infty\), is obtained under the additional assumption that the function \(y\mapsto \int_{(y,1]}x^{-2}\Lambda(dx)\) is regularly varying at \(0\) of index \(-1\). The assumption particularly ensures that the total internal branch length is of smaller order than the total external branch length. The strong law for the object (d) is used to provide the a.s. asymptotic behavior of components of the site frequency spectrum. The assertions of the present work unify several particular previously known results (these are explicitly mentioned in the paper). To prove their results, the authors work out a new argument which enables them to effectively treat some specific functionals of the decreasing block-counting discrete-time Markov chain. Also, they provide a thoughtful intuitive reasoning behind their findings.