Branching-stable point measures and processes

Abstract

We introduce and study the class of branching-stable point measures, which can be seen as an analog of stable random variables when the branching mechanism for point measures replaces the usual addition. In contrast with the classical theory of stable (Lévy) processes, there exists a rich family of branching-stable point measures with a negative scaling exponent, which can be described as certain Crump‒Mode‒Jagers branching processes. We investigate the asymptotic behavior of their cumulative distribution functions, that is, the number of atoms in (-∞, x] as x→∞, and further depict the genealogical lineage of typical atoms. For both results, we rely crucially on the work of Biggins (1977), (1992).