No label defined (Q4035834)

[For the entire collection see Zbl 0752.00055.] This article provides a brisk but very informative overview of several aspects of the theory of measure-valued stochastic processes. It outlines briefly some of the techniques available for the study of these processes, such as their specification through infinitesimal generators, their construction either through the semigroup approach or through the solution of corresponding martingale problems, the connection between measure-valued processes and their function-valued dual processes, etc. A number of examples are sketched: measure-valued branching diffusion processes, multilevel processes, the Fleming-Viot process and other related models from genetics. The article then proceeds to the statement of several typical results and an indication of how they are obtained. These results concern the fixed time behaviour, asymptotic behaviour or behaviour under rescaling of measure-valued processes. Topics covered here include Hausdorff dimensions of supporting sets, singularity, compact coherence, steady-state distributions, ergodic limits, extinction, etc.