Branching random walks and Minkowski sum of random walks

Abstract

We show that the range of a critical branching random walk conditioned to survive forever and the Minkowski sum of two independent simple random walk ranges are intersection-equivalent in any dimension $d\ge 5$, in the sense that they hit any finite set with comparable probability, as their common starting point is sufficiently far away from the set to be hit. Furthermore, we extend a discrete version of Kesten, Spitzer and Whitman's result on the law of large numbers for the volume of a Wiener sausage. Here, the sausage is made of the Minkowski sum of $N$ independent simple random walk ranges in $\mathbb{Z}^d$, with $d>2N$, and of a finite set $A\subset \mathbb{Z}^d$. When properly normalised the volume of the sausage converges to a quantity equivalent to the capacity of $A$ with respect to the kernel $K(x,y)=(1+\|x-y\|)^{2N-d}$. As a consequence, we establish a new relation between capacity and {\it branching capacity}.