The extremal position of a branching random walk in the general linear group

Ion Grama, Sebastian Mentemeier, Hui Xiao

Published 2022-06-10Version 1

Consider a branching random walk $(G_u)_{u\in \mathbb T}$ on the general linear group $\textrm{GL}(V)$ of a finite dimensional space $V$, where $\mathbb T$ is the associated genealogical tree with nodes $u$. For any starting point $v \in V \setminus\{0\}$, let $M^v_n=\max_{|u| = n} \log \| G_u v \|$ denote the maximal position of the walk $\log \| G_u v \|$ in the generation $n$. We first show that under suitable conditions, $\lim_{n \to \infty} \frac{M_n^v }{n} = \gamma_{+}$ almost surely, where $\gamma_{+}\in \mathbb R$ is a constant. Then, in the case when $\gamma_+=0$, under appropriate boundary conditions, we refine the last statement by determining the rate of convergence at which $M_n^v$ converges to $-\infty$. We prove in particular that $\lim_{n \to \infty} \frac{M_n^v}{\log n} = -\frac{3}{2\alpha}$ in probability, where $\alpha >0$ is a constant determined by the boundary conditions. Similar properties are established for the minimal position. As a consequence we derive the asymptotic speed of the maximal and minimal positions for the coefficients, the operator norm and the spectral radius of $G_u$.