Conditional Speed of BBM, Skeleton Decomposition and Application to Random Obstacles
We study a branching Brownian motion \(Z\) in \(\mathbb{R}^d\), among obstacles scattered according to a Poisson random measure with a radially decaying intensity. Obstacles are balls with constant radius and each one works as a trap for the whole motion when hit by a particle. Considering a general offspring distribution, we derive the decay rate of the annealed probability that none of the particles of \(Z\) hits a trap,
asymptotically in time \(t\). This proves to be a rich problem motivating the proof of
a more general result about the speed of branching Brownian motion conditioned on
non-extinction. We provide an appropriate "skeleton" decomposition for the underlying
Galton-Watson process when supercritical and show that the "doomed" particles do not contribute to the asymptotic decay rate.
This is joint work with M. Caglar and M. Oz (Istanbul); to appear in AIHP.