Co-existence of branching populations in random environment

Abstract

In this paper we consider two branching processes living in a joint random environment. Assuming that both processes are critical we address the following question: What is the probability that both populations survive up to a large time $n$? We show that this probability decays as $n^{-\theta}$ with $\theta>0$ which is determined by the random environment. Furthermore, we prove the corresponding conditional limit theorem. One of the main ingredients in the proof is a qualitative bound for the entropic repulsion for two-dimensional random walks conditioned to stay in the positive quadrant. We believe that this bound is also of independent interest.