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...

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...

Partition-valued and measure-valued coalescent Markov processes are constructed whose state describes the decomposition of a finite total mass m into a finite or countably infinite number of masses with sum m, and whose evolution is determined by the following intuitive prescription: each pair of masses of magnitudes x and y runs the risk of a binary collision to form a single mass of magnitude x+y at rate (x; y), for some non-negative, symmetric collision rate kernel (x; y). Such processes with finitely many masses have been used to model polymerization, coagulation, condensation, and the evolution of galactic clusters by gravitational attraction. With a suitable choice of state space, and under appropriate restrictions on and the initial distribution of mass, it is shown that such processes can be constructed as Feller or Feller-like processes. A number of further results are obtained for the additive coalescent with collision kernel (x; y) = x + y. This process, which arises fro...

In a Galton-Watson branching process with offspring distribution (p 0 ; p 1 ; : : :) started with k individuals, the distribution of the total progeny is identical to the distribution of the first passage time to \Gammak for a random walk started at 0 which takes steps of size j with probability p j+1 for j \Gamma1. The formula for this distribution is a probabilistic expression of the Lagrange inversion formula for the coefficients in the power series expansion of f(z) k in terms of those of g(z) for f(z) defined implicitly by f(z) = zg(f(z)). The Lagrange inversion formula is the analytic counterpart of various enumerations of trees and forests which generalize Cayley's formula kn n\Gammak\Gamma1 for the number of rooted forests labeled by a set of size n whose set of roots is a particular subset of size k. These known results are derived by elementary combinatorial methods without appeal to the Lagrange formula, which is then obtained as a byproduct. This approach unifies an...

Explicit formulae are obtained for the distribution of various random partitions of a positive integer n, both ordered and unordered, derived from the zero set M of a Brownian motion by the following scheme: pick n points uniformly at random from [0; 1], and classify them by whether they fall in the same or different component intervals of the complement of M . Corresponding results are obtained for M the range of a stable subordinator and for bridges defined by conditioning on 1 2 M . These formulae are related to discrete renewal Research supported by N.S.F. Grants MCS91-07531 and DMS94-04345 theory by a general method of discretizing a subordinator using the points of an independent homogeneous Poisson process. Keywords: composition, excursion, local time, random set, renewal. 1 Introduction A partition of n is an unordered collection of positive integers with sum n, usually coded by the vector of counts (m j ; 1 j n), where m j is the number of j's in the partition. The n...

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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By a Markovian bridge we mean a process obtained by conditioning a Markov process X to start in some state x at time 0 and arrive at some state z at time t. Once the definition is made precise, we call this process the (x, t, z)-bridge derived from X. Important examples are provided by Brownian and Bessel bridges, which have been extensively

A new class of random composition structures (the ordered analog of Kingman’s partition structures) is defined by a regenerative description of component sizes. Each regenerative composition structure is represented by a process of random sampling of points from an exponential distribution on the positive halfline, and separating the points into clusters by an independent regenerative random set. Examples are composition structures derived from residual allocation models, including one associated with the Ewens sampling formula, and composition structures derived from the zero set of a Brownian motion or Bessel process. We provide characterisation results and formulas relating the distribution of the regenerative composition to the Lévy parameters of a subordinator whose range is the corresponding regenerative set. In particular, the only reversible regenerative composition structures are those associated with the interval partition of [0, 1] generated by excursions of a standard Bessel bridge of dimension 2 − 2α for some α ∈ [0, 1].