Probabilistic proof for non-survival at criticality : the Galton-Watson process and more

Abstract

In a famous paper, Bezuidenhout and Grimmett demonstrated that the contact process dies out at the critical point.Their proof technique has often been used to study the growth of population patterns. The present text is intended as an introduction to their ideas, with examples of minimal technicality. In particular, we recover the basic theorem about Galton-Watson chains: except in a degenerate case, survival is possible only if the fertility rate exceeds 1. The classical proof that is taught in classrooms is essentially analytic, based on generating functions and convexity arguments. Following the Bezuidenhout-Grimmett way, we propose a proof that is more consistent with probabilistic intuition. We also study the survival problem for a cooperative model, mixing sexual and asexual reproduction.