Cutting down trees with a Markov chainsaw (Q473156)

Start with a rooted tree and at each step randomly remove an edge and keep only the part of the tree containing the root. Repeat until only the root is left. What is the random number of steps performed? In this paper, the authors give new simpler proofs for the asymptotic distribution of the number of steps required for trees generated by various Galton-Watson-type processes. They also give a more precise non-asymptotic results for a particular type of such trees. Finally, they also study a continuous version of this edge removal on the Brownian continuum random tree.