Tail asymptotics for the supercritical Galton-Watson process in the heavy-tailed case

Abstract

As well known, for a supercritical Galton-Watson process $Z_n$ whose offspring distribution has mean $m>1$, the ratio $W_n:=Z_n/m^n$ has a.s. limit, say $W$. We study tail behaviour of the distributions of $W_n$ and $W$ in the case where $Z_1$ has heavy-tailed distribution, that is, $\E e^{\lambda Z_1}=\infty$ for every $\lambda>0$. We show how different types of distributions of $Z_1$ lead to different asymptotic behaviour of the tail of $W_n$ and $W$. We describe the most likely way how large values of the process occur.