Split merge dynamics for expanding intervals and point processes on the real line

Abstract

We study sequences of partitions of a non decreasing sequence I n of intervals into subintervals, starting from the trivial partition, in which each partition is obtained from the one before by splitting its subintervals in two, according to a given rule, and then merging pairs of subintervals at the break points of the old partition. The nth partition then comprises n+1 subintervals with n break points. When I n = [0, 1] is constant, the empirical distribution of these points was shown to converge weakly to a singular probability supported in {0, 1} in a previous article. When the length of the intervals is regularly varying with a positive index, we show in this article that the limit can be absolutely continuous. In the last part we extend the split merge dynamics to partitions of R. In this case we characterize invariant distributions and show that special instances of split merge dynamics for expanding intervals converge to these invariant measures vaguely in distribution.