Spread of visited sites of a random walk along the generations of a branching process

Abstract

In this paper we consider a null recurrent random walk in random environment on a super-critical Galton-Watson tree. We consider the case where the log-Laplace transform $ψ$ of the branching process satisfies $ψ(1)=ψ'(1)=0$ for which G. Faraud, Y. Hu and Z. Shi in \cite{HuShi10b} show that, with probability one, the largest generation visited by the walk, until the instant $n$, is of the order of $(\log n)^3$. In \cite{AndreolettiDebs1} we prove that the largest generation entirely visited behaves almost surely like $\log n$ up to a constant. Here we study how the walk visits the generations $\ell=(\log n)^{1+ ζ}$, with $0 < ζ<2$. We obtain results in probability giving the asymptotic logarithmic behavior of the number of visited sites at a given generation. We prove that there is a phase transition at generation $(\log n)^2$ for the mean of visited sites until $n$ returns to the root. Also we show that the visited sites spread all over the tree until generation $\ell$.

25 pages