Biased random walks on Galton–Watson trees with leaves

Abstract

We consider a biased random walk Xn on a Galton–Watson tree with leaves in the sub-ballistic regime. We prove that there exists an explicit constant γ = γ(β) ∈ (0, 1), depending on the bias β, such that |Xn| is of order nγ. Denoting Δn the hitting time of level n, we prove that Δn/n1/γ is tight. Moreover, we show that Δn/n1/γ does not converge in law (at least for large values of β). We prove that along the sequences nλ(k) = ⌊λβγk⌋, Δn/n1/γ converges to certain infinitely divisible laws. Key tools for the proof are the classical Harris decomposition for Galton–Watson trees, a new variant of regeneration times and the careful analysis of triangular arrays of i.i.d. heavy-tailed random variables.