1. Introduction
We consider a continuous-time branching random walk (BRW) on the multidimensional lattice , , with one source of particle reproduction and death located at the origin and an infinite number of absorbing sources located at all other points of the lattice in which, in addition to walk, the particle can only disappear.
The behavior of a BRW with a single source of particle generation (
branching) located at the origin and no absorption at other points under the assumption of a finite variance of jumps has been studied, for example, in [
1], and with infinite variance in [
2,
3]. The random walk underlying the processes under consideration is defined using the transition intensity matrix
and satisfies conditions of regularity, symmetry, spatial homogeneity (which allows us to consider
as a function of one argument
), homogeneity in time and irreducibility. In these models the operator that specifies the evolution of the average number of particles has the form
where the operator
generated by the matrix
A acts on the function
by the formula
and the operator
is defined by the equality
, where
denotes a column-vector on the lattice taking the unit value at the point
and vanishing at other points. The parameter
in the definition of the operator
is given by the equality
, where
is the intensity of occurrence of
descendants of the particle, including the particle itself,
is the absorption intensity of the particle. Thus, the operator
determines the process of particle branching at the origin.
In a BRW with an infinite number of absorbing sources the evolution operator of the average number of particles is modified as follows
where
I is the identity operator and the last term specifies the process of absorption of particles at every lattice point. Note that the parameter
in the considered BRW differs from the parameter
in that for
the parameter
can take values from the interval
, while the parameter
is non-negative:
.
Let the parameter
be determined by the formula
, where
is the Green’s function of the random walk. Many properties of the transition probabilities of a random walk
are expressed in terms of the Green’s function, while the Green’s function can be defined as the Laplace transform of the transition probability
by the formula:
As shown, for example, in [
1], when the relation
holds, the operator
has an isolated positive eigenvalue
, which is the solution of the equation
. The asymptotic behavior of the integer moments of the total number of particles and the number of particles at every point of the lattice in the process under consideration depends on the dimension of the lattice
d, the relation between the parameters
and
, and for
also on the relation between
and
.
In the case of
a BRW with one source of particle generation and no absorbing sources is called
supercritical. The operator
in this case has an isolated positive eigenvalue and there is an exponential growth in the number of particles at every point and in the total number of particles [
1]. In the process under consideration, if the relation
holds, the operator
has an isolated eigenvalue
, where
is an isolated eigenvalue of the operator
. Note that the eigenvalue
of the operator
is not always positive, so the behavior of the process differs significantly depending on the relation between the parameters
and
.
The structure of the paper is as follows. In
Section 2 we give a formal description of a BRW with particle reproduction at the origin and absorption at every point of the lattice.
Section 3 presents the key equations.
Section 4 gives a complete classification of the asymptotic behavior of the first moments of particle numbers. In
Section 5 the limit Theorem 7 is obtained, which states that despite the infinite number of absorbing sources an exponential growth of both the total number of particles and the number of particles at every point can be observed in the considered BRW. This happens when
, which is equivalent to
. In
Section 6 we study the asymptotic behavior of the particle number moments for
and
(
), it is found that the integer moments both the total number of particles and the number of particles at every point grow in a power-law manner as
, with the first moments behaving as constants at infinity. In
Section 7 we consider the remaining cases, that is, the case when
and
(
), and also, when the operator
does not have an isolated eigenvalue, that is, when
. Theorems 9–11 are obtained, stating that the moments of particle numbers in these cases decrease exponentially as
. It turned out that the results of
Section 5 and
Section 6 as well as Theorem 9 of
Section 7 do not depend on the conditions imposed on the variance of random walk jumps, while the behavior of the process for
turns out to be different for finite and infinite variance of jumps (Theorems 10 and 11).
We will call the considered BRW supercritical if and , critical if and and subcritical if and or .
Note that there is no exponential decrease of moments in a BRW with a single source of particle generation (and the absence of other absorbing sources) [
1]. The classification of the asymptotic behavior of the BRW with possible absorption of particles at every point
turns out to be closer to the classification of the behavior of the Markov branching process
with continuous time, where the average number of particles
. A branching process is called
supercritical if
(
),
critical if
(
) and
subcritical if
(
), that is, the average number of particles in the supercritical branching process increases exponentially, in the critical it tends to a constant and in the subcritical it decreases exponentially [
4].