Exact Hausdorff measure on the boundary of a Galton-Watson tree

Hausdorff and packing measures (28A78) Fractals (28A80) Self-similar stochastic processes (60G18) Branching processes (Galton-Watson, birth-and-death, etc.) (60J80)

Abstract: A necessary and sufficient condition for the almost sure existence of an absolutely continuous (with respect to the branching measure) exact Hausdorff measure on the boundary of a Galton--Watson tree is obtained. In the case where the absolutely continuous exact Hausdorff measure does not exist almost surely, a criterion which classifies gauge functions

p h i

according to whether

p h i

-Hausdorff measure of the boundary minus a certain exceptional set is zero or infinity is given. Important examples are discussed in four additional theorems. In particular, Hawkes's conjecture in 1981 is solved. Problems of determining the exact local dimension of the branching measure at a typical point of the boundary are also solved.

Review text

Let \(T\subset\bigcup_n\mathbb{Z}^n\) be a Galton-Watson tree with offspring distribution \(p_n:=P(N=n)\), \(n=0,1,2,\dots\), i.e., \(\emptyset \in T\), for \((i_1, \dots,i_n)\in T\), \(j\in\mathbb{Z}^+\) we have \((t_1,\dots,i_n, j)\in T\) if and only if \(0\leq j\leq N_{i_1,\dots,i_n}-1)\) \((N_{\dots}\) are iid copies of \(N)\) and if \((i_1,\dots,i_n)\in T\) then \((i_1,\dots,i_k)\in T\) for all \(k\leq n\). The boundary of \(T\) is defined as the set \(\delta T= \{(i_j)_{j\in N}:(i_1,\dots,i_n) \in T\) for all \(n\in\mathbb{N}\}\). The Galton-Watson process \(Z_n\) consists of the cardinality of the set \(F_n:=\{(i_1, \dots,i_n)\in T\}\). If \(Z_n\) is supercritical, one can define the following limiting random variable \(W:=\lim_{n \to\infty}Z_n/a^n\) where \(a=E(N)>1\) is the expected number of offspring. The author provides necessary and sufficient conditions for the almost sure existence of an absolutely continuous (w.r.t. the branching measure) exact Hausdorff measure on the boundary \(\partial T\): If \(K(x):= \int^\infty_xP (N>u)\,du\) satisfies \(\lim\inf_{x\to\infty}K(2x)/K(x)=0\), then there exists a (not necessarily unique) a.c. exact Hausdorff measure function \(\varphi\) for \(\partial T\) of the form \(\varphi(t)=t^{\log a}g (|\log t|)\) where \(g:\mathbb R^+\to \mathbb{R}^+\) and \(\lim\sup_{n\to\infty}g(n+1)/ g(n)<a\). Moreover, the \(\varphi\)-Hausdorff measure \({\mathcal H}^\varphi (\partial T)=C_\varphi\cdot W\) a.s. on \(\{\partial T\neq\emptyset\}\) where the constant \(C_\varphi\in(0,\infty]\) is exactly determined. For any Borel set \(A\subset\partial T\) one has also \({\mathcal H}^\varphi(A)=C_\varphi \cdot\mu(A)\) where \(\mu\) denotes the branching measure. If \(\lim \inf_{x\to\infty}K(2x)/K(x)>0\), then there is no a.c. exact Hausdorff measure for \(\partial T\), but a criterion classifying all gauge functions \(\varphi\) according to whether the \(\varphi\)-Hausdorff measure of \(\partial T\setminus\Delta\) \((\Delta\) is some rather complicated exceptional measure) is zero or infinite. Some important special cases are discussed, mainly correcting some earlier paper by \textit{Q. S. Liu} [Probab. Theory Relat. Fields 104, No. 4, 515--538 (1996; Zbl 0842.60084)] and proving some conjecture due to \textit{J. Hawkes} [J. Lond. Math. Soc., II. Ser. 24, 373--384 (1981; Zbl 0468.60081)].

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