On the asymptotic patterns of supercritical branching processes in varying environments (Q2564694)

In a Galton-Watson process in a varying environment, individuals in the same generation give rise to independent families, as usual, but the family size distribution depends on the generation number. Let \(X_{n}\) be the family size used at generation \(n\) and let \(Z_{n}\) be the size of the \(n\)th generation. Suppose that there are some constants \(c_{n}\) such that \(Z_{n}/c_{n}\) has a limit. This paper describes exactly when it is possible for such a limit to have a discontinuous distribution on \((0,\infty)\). To describe the results more fully, let \(k_{n}\) be the most probable family size in generation \(n\), \(i_{n}\) be the product of the \(k_{i}\) from \(i=0\) to \(n-1\) and \(M_{n}=\max \{P(Z_{n}=i):i>0\}\). The main result is that the following three statements are equivalent: all limits that arise by normalizing \(\{Z_{n} \}\) are continuous on \((0,\infty)\); \(M_{n}\) tends to zero; and \(\sum i_{n}(1-P(X_{n}=k_{n}))\) is infinite. Furthermore, when a discontinuous limit arises it must be from a normalising sequence equivalent to \(\{ i_{n}\}\).