The two-parameter Poisson-Dirichlet distribution, denoted pd(ff; `), is a distribution on the set of decreasing positive sequences with sum 1. The usual Poisson-Dirichlet distribution with a single parameter `, introduced by Kingman, is pd(0; `). Known properties of pd(0; `), including the Markov chain description due to Vershik-Shmidt-Ignatov, are generalized to the two-parameter case. The size-biased random permutation of pd(ff; `) is a simple residual allocation model proposed by Engen in the context of species diversity, and rediscovered by Perman and the authors in the study of excursions of Brownian motion and Bessel processes. For 0 ! ff ! 1, pd(ff; 0) is the asymptotic distribution of ranked lengths of excursions of a Markov chain away from a state whose recurrence time distribution is in the domain of attraction of a stable law of index ff. Formulae in this case trace back to work of Darling, Lamperti and Wendel in the 1950's and 60's. The distribution of ranked lengths of e...

Consider N particles, which merge into clusters according to the rule: a cluster of size x and a cluster of size y merge at (stochastic) rate K(x; y)=N , where K is a specified rate kernel. This MarcusLushnikov model of stochastic coalescence, and the underlying deterministic approximation given by the Smoluchowski coagulation equations, have an extensive scientific literature. Some mathematical literature (Kingman's coalescent in population genetics; component sizes in random graphs) implicitly studies the special cases K(x; y) = 1 and K(x; y) = xy. We attempt a wide-ranging survey. General kernels are only now starting to be studied rigorously, so many interesting open problems appear. Keywords. branching process, coalescence, continuum tree, densitydependent Markov process, gelation, random graph, random tree, Smoluchowski coagulation equation Research supported by N.S.F. Grant DMS96-22859 1 Introduction Models, implicitly or explicitly stochastic, of coalescence (= coagulati...

For each finite measure on [0

Let (B t (s); 0 s ! 1) be reflecting inhomogeneous Brownian motion with drift t \Gamma s at time s, started with B t (0) = 0. Consider the random graph G(n; n \Gamma1 +tn \Gamma4=3 ), whose largest components have size of order n 2=3 . Normalizing by n \Gamma2=3 , the asymptotic joint distribution of component sizes is the same as the joint distribution of excursion lengths of B t (Corollary 2). The dynamics of merging of components as t increases are abstracted to define the multiplicative coalescent process. The states of this process are vectors x of nonnegative real cluster sizes (x i ), and clusters with sizes x i and x j merge at rate x i x j . The multiplicative coalescent is shown to be a Feller process on l 2 . The random graph limit specifies the standard multiplicative coalescent, which starts from infinitesimally small clusters at time \Gamma1: the existence of such a process is not obvious. AMS 1991 subject classifications. 60C05, 60J50, Key words and phras...

Regard an element of the set \Delta := f(x 1 ; x 2 ; : : :) : x 1 x 2 : : : 0; X i x i = 1g as a fragmentation of unit mass into clusters of masses x i . The additive coalescent of Evans and Pitman (1997) is the \Delta-valued Markov process in which pairs of clusters of masses fx i ; x j g merge into a cluster of mass x i +x j at rate x i +x j . They showed that a version (X 1 (t); \Gamma1 ! t ! 1) of this process arises as a n !1 weak limit of the process started at time \Gamma 1 2 log n with n clusters of mass 1=n. We show this standard additive coalescent may be constructed from the continuum random tree of Aldous (1991,1993) by Poisson splitting along the skeleton of the tree. We describe the distribution of X 1 (t) on \Delta at a fixed time t. We show that the size of the cluster containing a given atom, as a process in t, has a simple representation in terms of the stable subordinator of index 1=2. As t ! \Gamma1, we establish a Gaussian limit for (centered and norm...

Various enumerations of labeled trees and forests, including Cayley's formula n n\Gamma2 for the number of trees labeled by [n], and Cayley's multinomial expansion over trees, are derived from the following coalescent construction of a sequence of random forests (R n ; R n\Gamma1 ; : : : ; R 1 ) such that R k has uniform distribution over the set of all forests of k rooted trees labeled by [n]. Let R n be the trivial forest with n root vertices and no edges. For n k 2, given that R n ; : : : ; R k have been defined so that R k is a rooted forest of k trees, define R k\Gamma1 by addition to R k of a single edge picked uniformly at random from the set of n(k \Gamma 1) edges which when added to R k yield a rooted forest of k \Gamma 1 trees. This coalescent construction is related to a model for a physical process of clustering or coagulation, the additive coalescent in which a system of masses is subject to binary coalescent collisions, with each pair of masses of magnitude...

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Given an arbitrary distribution on a countable set S consider the number of independent samples required until the first repeated value is seen. Exact and asymptotic formulae are derived for the distribution of this time and of the times until subsequent repeats. Asymptotic properties of the repeat times are derived by embedding in a Poisson process. In particular, necessary and sufficient conditions for convergence are given and the possible limits explicitly described. Under the same conditions the finite dimensional distributions of the repeat times converge to the arrival times of suitably modified Poisson processes, and random trees derived from the sequence of independent Research supported in part by N.S.F. Grants DMS 92-24857, 94-04345, 92-24868 and 97-03691 trials converge in distribution to an inhomogeneous continuum random tree. 1 Introduction Recall the classical birthday problem: given that each day of the year is equally likely as a possible birthday, and that birth...

We introduce a probabilistic model that is meant to describe an object that falls apart randomly as time passes and fulfills a certain scaling property. We show that the distribution of such a process is determined by its index of self-similarity α ∈ R, a rate of erosion c ≥ 0, and a so-called Lévy measure that accounts for sudden dislocations. The key of the analysis is provided by a transformation of self-similar fragmentations which enables us to reduce the study to the homogeneous case α = 0 which is treated in [6].

Regard an element of the set of ranked discrete distributions \Delta := f(x 1 ; x 2 ; : : :) : x 1 x 2 : : : 0; P i x i = 1g as a fragmentation of unit mass into clusters of masses x i . The additive coalescent is the \Delta-valued Markov process in which pairs of clusters of masses fx i ; x j g merge into a cluster of mass x i + x j at rate x i + x j . Aldous and Pitman (1998) showed that a version of this process starting from time \Gamma1 with infinitesimally small clusters can be constructed from the Brownian continuum random tree of Aldous (1991,1993) by Poisson splitting along the skeleton of the tree. In this paper it is shown that the general such process may be constructed analogously from a new family of inhomogeneous continuum random trees.