Searcharxiv⌕ Search

arXiv subjects

Vincent Bansaye

Publications and source records attributed to Vincent Bansaye.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

Ergodic behavior of non-conservative semigroups via generalized Doeblin's conditions

We provide quantitative estimates in total variation distance for positive semi-groups, which can be non-conservative and non-homogeneous. The techniques relies on a family of conservative semigroups that describes a typical particle and Doeblin's type conditions for coupling the associated process. Our aim is to provide quantitative estimates for linear partial differential equations and we develop several applications for population dynamics in varying environment. We start with the asymptotic profile for a growth diffusion model with time and space non-homogeneity. Moreover we provide general estimates for semigroups which become asymptotically homogeneous, which are applied to an age-structured population model. Finally, we obtain a speed of convergence for periodic semi-groups and new bounds in the homogeneous setting. They are are illustrated on the renewal equation.

math.AP↗

Scaling limits of general population processes - Wright-Fisher and branching processes in random environment

Our motivation comes from the large population approximation of individual based models in population dynamics and population genetics. We propose a general method to investigate scaling limits of finite dimensional population size Markov chains to diffusion with jumps. The statements of tightness, identification and convergence in law are based on the convergence of suitable characteristics of the transition of the chain and strongly exploit the structure of the population processes defined recursively as sums of independent random variables. These results allow to reduce the convergence of characteristics of semimartingales to analytically tractable functional spaces. We develop two main applications. First, we extend the classical Wright-Fisher diffusion approximation to independent and identically distributed random environment. Second, we obtain the convergence in law of generalized Galton-Watson processes with interactions and random environment to the solution of stochastic differential equations with jumps.

math.PR↗

Diffusions from Infinity

In this paper we consider diffusions on the half line (0, $\infty$) such that the expectation of the arrival time at the origin is uniformly bounded in the initial point. This implies that there is a well defined diffusion process starting from infinity, which takes finite values at positive times. We study the behaviour of hitting times of large barriers and in a dual way, the behaviour of the process starting at infinity for small time. In particular we prove that the process coming down from infinity is in small time governed by a specific deterministic function. Suitably normalized fluctuations of the hitting times are asymptotically Gaussian. We also derive the tail of the distribution of the hitting time of the origin and a Yaglom limit for the diffusion starting from infinity. We finally prove that the distribution of this process killed at the origin is absolutely continuous with respect to the speed measure. The density is expressed in terms of the eigenvalues and eigenfunctions of the generator of the killed diffusion.

math.PR↗

Queuing for an infinite bus line and aging branching process

We study a queueing system with Poisson arrivals on a bus line indexed by integers. The buses move at constant speed to the right and the time of service per customer getting on the bus is fixed. The customers arriving at station i wait for a bus if this latter is less than d\_i stations before, where d\_i is non-decreasing. We determine the asymptotic behavior of a single bus and when two buses eventually coalesce almost surely by coupling arguments. Three regimes appear, two of which leading to a.s. coalescing of the buses.The approach relies on a connection with aged structured branching processes with immigration and varying environment. We need to prove a Kesten Stigum type theorem, i.e. the a.s. convergence of the successive size of the branching process normalized by its mean. The technics developed combines a spine approach for multitype branching process in varying environment and geometric ergodicity along the spine to control the increments of the normalized process.

math.PR↗

Some stochastic models for structured populations : scaling limits and long time behavior

The first chapter concerns monotype population models. We first study general birth and death processes and we give non-explosion and extinction criteria, moment computations and a pathwise representation. We then show how different scales may lead to different qualitative approximations, either ODEs or SDEs. The prototypes of these equations are the logistic (deterministic) equation and the logistic Feller diffusion process. The convergence in law of the sequence of processes is proved by tightness-uniqueness argument. In these large population approximations, the competition between individuals leads to nonlinear drift terms. We then focus on models without interaction but including exceptional events due either to demographic stochasticity or to environmental stochasticity. In the first case, an individual may have a large number of offspring and we introduce the class of continuous state branching processes. In the second case, catastrophes may occur and kill a random fraction of the population and the process enjoys a quenched branching property. We emphasize on the study of the Laplace transform, which allows us to classify the long time behavior of these processes. In the second chapter, we model structured populations by measure-valued stochastic differential equations. Our approach is based on the individual dynamics. The individuals are characterized by parameters which have an influence on their survival or reproduction ability. Some of these parameters can be genetic and are inheritable except when mutations occur, but they can also be a space location or a quantity of parasites. The individuals compete for resources or other environmental constraints. We describe the population by a point measure-valued Markov process. We study macroscopic approximations of this process depending on the interplay between different scalings and obtain in the limit either integro-differential equations or reaction-diffusion equations or nonlinear super-processes. In each case, we insist on the specific techniques for the proof of convergence and for the study of the limiting model. The limiting processes offer different models of mutation-selection dynamics. Then, we study two-level models motivated by cell division dynamics, where the cell population is discrete and characterized by a trait, which may be continuous. In 1 particular, we finely study a process for parasite infection and the trait is the parasite load. The latter grows following a Feller diffusion and is randomly shared in the two daughter cells when the cell divides. Finally, we focus on the neutral case when the rate of division of cells is constant but the trait evolves following a general Markov process and may split in a random number of cells. The long time behavior of the structured population is then linked and derived from the behavior a well chosen SDE (monotype population).

math.PR↗

Approximation of stochastic processes by non-expansive flows and coming down from infinity

We approximate stochastic processes in finite dimension by dynamical systems. We provide trajectorial estimates which are uniform with respect to the initial condition for a well chosen distance. This relies on some non-expansivity property of the flow, which allows to deal with non-Lipschitz vector fields. We use the stochastic calculus and follow the martingale technics initiated in Berestycki and al [5] to control the fluctuations. Our main applications deal with the short time behavior of stochastic processes starting from large initial values. We state general properties on the coming down from infinity of one-dimensional SDEs, with a focus on stochastically monotone processes. In particular, we recover and complement known results on Lambda-coalescent and birth and death processes. Moreover, using Poincar{é}'s compactification technicsfor dynamical systems close to infinity, we develop this approach in two dimensions for competitive stochastic models. We classify the coming down from infinity of Lotka-Volterra diffusions and provide uniform estimates for the scaling limits of competitive birth and death processes.

math.PR↗

Lower large deviations for supercritical branching processes in random environment

Branching Processes in Random Environment (BPREs) $(Z\_n:n\geq0)$ are the generalization of Galton-Watson processes where in each generation the reproduction law is picked randomly in an i.i.d. manner. In the supercritical regime, the process survives with a positive probability and grows exponentially on the non-extinction event. We focus on rare events when the process takes positive values but lower than expected. More precisely, we are interested in the lower large deviations of $Z$, which means the asymptotic behavior of the probability $\{1 \leq Z\_n \leq \exp(nθ)\}$ as $n\rightarrow \infty$. We provide an expression of the rate of decrease of this probability, under some moment assumptions, which yields the rate function. This result generalizes the lower large deviation theorem of Bansaye and Berestycki (2009) by considering processes where $¶(Z\_1=0 \vert Z\_0=1)\textgreater{}0$ and also much weaker moment assumptions.

math.PR↗

Tightness for processes with fixed points of discontinuities and applications in varying environment

We establish a sufficient condition for the tightness of a sequence of stochastic processes. Our condition makes it possible to study processes with accumulations of fixed times of discontinuity. Our motivation comes from the study of processes in varying or random environment. We demonstrate the usefulness of our condition on two examples: Galton Watson branching processes in varying environment and logistic branching processes with catastrophes.

math.PR↗

Speed of coming down from infinity for birth and death processes

We finely describe the speed of "coming down from infinity" for birth and death processes which eventually become extinct. Under general assumptions on the birth and death rates, we firstly determine the behavior of the successive hitting times of large integers. We put in light two different regimes depending on whether the mean time for the process to go from $n+1$ to $n$ is negligible or not compared to the mean time to reach $n$ from infinity. In the first regime, the coming down from infinity is very fast and the convergence is weak. In the second regime, the coming down from infinity is gradual and a law of large numbers and a central limit theorem for the hitting times sequence hold. By an inversion procedure, we deduce that the process is a.s. equivalent to a non-increasing function when the time goes to zero. Our results are illustrated by several examples including applications to population dynamics and population genetics. The particular case where the death rate varies regularly is studied in details.

math.PR↗

On the scaling limits of Galton Watson processes in varying environment

We establish a general sufficient condition for a sequence of Galton Watson branching processes in varying environment to converge weakly. This condition extends previous results by allowing offspring distributions to have infinite variance, which leads to a new and subtle phenomena when the process goes through a bottleneck and also in terms of time scales. Our assumptions are stated in terms of pointwise convergence of a triplet of two real-valued functions and a measure. The limiting process is characterized by a backwards ordinary differential equation satisfied by its Laplace exponent, which generalizes the branching equation satisfied by continuous state branching processes. Several examples are discussed, namely branching processes in random environment, Feller diffusion in varying environment and branching processes with catastrophes.

math.PR↗

On the survival of a class of subcritical branching processes in random environment

Let $Z_{n}$ be the number of individuals in a subcritical BPRE evolving in the environment generated by iid probability distributions. Let $X$ be the logarithm of the expected offspring size per individual given the environment. Assuming that the density of $X$ has the form $$p_{X}(x)=x^{-β-1}l_{0}(x)e^{-ρx}$$ for some $β>2,$ a slowly varying function $l_{0}(x)$ and $ρ\in \left( 0,1\right),$ we find the asymptotic survival probability and prove a Yaglom type conditional limit theorem for the process. The survival probability decreases exponentially with an additional polynomial term related to the tail of $X$. The proof relies on a fine study of a random walk (with negative drift and heavy tails) conditioned to stay positive until time $n$ and to have a small positive value at time $n$, with $n$ tending to infinity.

math.PR↗

On the extinction of Continuous State Branching Processes with catastrophes

We consider continuous state branching processes (CSBP) with additional multiplicative jumps modeling dramatic events in a random environment. These jumps are described by a Lévy process with bounded variation paths. We construct a process of this class as the unique solution of a stochastic differential equation. The quenched branching property of the process allows us to derive quenched and annealed results and to observe new asymptotic behaviors. We characterize the Laplace exponent of the process as the solution of a backward ordinary differential equation and establish the probability of extinction. Restricting our attention to the critical and subcritical cases, we show that four regimes arise for the speed of extinction, as in the case of branching processes in random environment in discrete time and space. The proofs are based on the precise asymptotic behavior of exponential functionals of Lévy processes. Finally, we apply these results to a cell infection model and determine the mean speed of propagation of the infection.

math.PR↗

Random walk with heavy tail and negative drift conditioned by its minimum and final values

We consider random walks with finite second moment which drifts to $-\infty$ and have heavy tail. We focus on the events when the minimum and the final value of this walk belong to some compact set. We first specify the associated probability. Then, conditionally on such an event, we finely describe the trajectory of the random walk. It yields a decomposition theorem with respect to a random time giving a big jump whose distribution can be described explicitly.

math.PR↗

Ancestral lineages and limit theorems for branching Markov chains

We consider a branching model in discrete time where each individual has a trait in some general state space. Both the reproduction law and the trait inherited by the offsprings may depend on the trait of the mother and the environment. We study the long time behavior of the population and the ancestral lineage of typical individuals under general assumptions, which we specify for applications to some models motivated by biology. Our results focus on the growth rate, the trait distribution among the population for large time, so as local densities and the position of extremal individuals. The approach consists in comparing the branching Markov chain to a well chosen (possibly non-homogeneous) Markov chain.

math.PR↗

How do birth and death processes come down from infinity?

We finely describe the "coming down from infinity" for birth and death processes which eventually become extinct. Our biological motivation is to study the decrease of regulated populations which are initially large. Under general assumptions on the birth and death rates, we describe the behavior of the hitting time of large integers. We let two regimes appear and derive an expression of the speed of coming down from infinity. In the case of death rates with regular variations, we also get a central limit theorem and the asymptotic probability of extinction in small times. Finally, we apply our results to birth and death processes in varying environment in whose the environment influences the competition.

math.PR↗

Weak law of large numbers for some Markov chains along non homogeneous genealogies

We consider a population with non-overlapping generations, whose size goes to infinity. It is described by a discrete genealogy which may be time non-homogeneous and we pay special attention to branching trees in varying environments. A Markov chain models the dynamic of the trait of each individual along this genealogy and may also be time non-homogeneous. Such models are motivated by transmission processes in the cell division, reproduction-dispersion dynamics or sampling problems in evolution. We want to determine the evolution of the distribution of the traits among the population, namely the asymptotic behavior of the proportion of individuals with a given trait. We prove some quenched laws of large numbers which rely on the ergodicity of an auxiliary process, in the same vein as \cite{guy,delmar}. Applications to time inhomogeneous Markov chains lead us to derive a backward (with respect to the environment) law of large numbers and a law of large numbers on the whole population until generation $n$. A central limit is also established in the transient case.

math.PR↗

New approaches of source-sink metapopulations decoupling the roles of demography and dispersal

Source-sink systems are metapopulations of habitat patches with different, and possibly temporally varying, habitat qualities, which are commonly used in ecology to study the fate of spatially extended natural populations. We propose new techniques that allow to disentangle the respective contributions of demography and dispersal to the dynamics and fate of a single species in a source-sink metapopulation. Our approach is valid for a general class of stochastic, individual-based, stepping-stone models, with density-independent demography and dispersal, provided the metapopulation is finite or else enjoys some transitivity property. We provide 1) a simple criterion of persistence, by studying the motion of a single random disperser until it returns to its initial position; 2) a joint characterization of the long-term growth rate and of the asymptotic occupancy frequencies of the ancestral lineage of a random survivor, by using large deviations theory. Both techniques yield formulae decoupling demography and dispersal, and can be adapted to the case of periodic or random environments, where habitat qualities are autocorrelated in space and possibly in time. In this last case, we display examples of coupled time-averaged sinks allowing survival, as was previously known in the absence of demographic stochasticity for fully mixing (Jansen and Yoshimura, 1998) and even partially mixing (Evans et al., 2012; Schreiber, 2010) metapopulations.

math.PR↗

Small positive values for supercritical branching processes in random environment

Branching Processes in Random Environment (BPREs) $(Z_n:n\geq0)$ are the generalization of Galton-Watson processes where in each generation the reproduction law is picked randomly in an i.i.d. manner. In the supercritical case, the process survives with positive probability and then almost surely grows geometrically. This paper focuses on rare events when the process takes positive but small values for large times. We describe the asymptotic behavior of $\mathbb{P}(1 \leq Z_n \leq k|Z_0=i)$, $k,i\in\mathbb{N}$ as $n\rightarrow \infty$. More precisely, we characterize the exponential decrease of $\mathbb{P}(Z_n=k|Z_0=i)$ using a spine representation due to Geiger. We then provide some bounds for this rate of decrease. If the reproduction laws are linear fractional, this rate becomes more explicit and two regimes appear. Moreover, we show that these regimes affect the asymptotic behavior of the most recent common ancestor, when the population is conditioned to be small but positive for large times.

math.PR↗