A result on power moments of Lévy-type perpetuities and its application to the $L_p$-convergence of Biggins' martingales in branching Lévy processes

Abstract

Lévy-type perpetuities being the a.s. limits of particular generalized Ornstein-Uhlenbeck processes are a natural continuous-time generalization of discrete-time perpetuities. These are random variables of the form $S:=\int_{[0,\infty)}e^{-X_{s-}}{\mathrm{d}}Z_s$, where $(X,Z)$ is a two-dimensional Lévy process, and $Z$ is a drift-free Lévy process of bounded variation. We prove an ultimate criterion for the finiteness of power moments of $S$. This result and the previously known assertion due to Erickson and Maller (2005) concerning the a.s. finiteness of $S$ are then used to derive ultimate necessary and sufficient conditions for the $L_p$-convergence for $p>1$ and $p=1$, respectively, of Biggins' martingales associated to branching Lévy processes. In particular, we provide final versions of results obtained recently by Bertoin and Mallein (2018).