Chernoff bounds for branching random walks

Abstract

Concentration inequalities, which have proved very useful in a variety of fields, provide fairly tight bounds on large deviation probabilities while central limit theorem (CLT) describes the asymptotic distribution around the mean (at the $\sqrt{n}$ scale). Harris (1963) conjectured that for a supercritical branching random walk (BRW) of i.i.d offspring and i.i.d displacements, positions of individuals in $nth$ generation approach to Gaussian distribution -- central limit theorem. This conjecture was later proved by Stam (1966) and Kaplan \& Asmussen (1976). Refinements and extensions followed. However, to the best of our knowledge, there is no corresponding existing work on concentration inequalities for BRWs. In this note, we propose a new definition of BRW, providing a more general framework. Owing to this definition, a Chernoff-type (subgaussian) bound for BRWs follows directly from the Chernoff bound for random walk. The relation between RW (random walk) and BRW is discussed.