J Theor Probab (2011) 24: 170–193 DOI 10.1007/s10959-010-0322-7 L log L Condition for Supercritical Branching Hunt Processes Rong-Li Liu · Yan-Xia Ren · Renming Song Received: 17 March 2009 / Revised: 17 July 2010 / Published online: 19 October 2010 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010 Abstract In this paper we use the spine decomposition and martingale change of measure to establish a Kesten–Stigum L log L theorem for branching Hunt processes. This result is a generalization of the results in Asmussen and Hering (Z. Wahrschein- lichkeitstheor. Verw. Geb. 36:195–212, 1976) and Hering (Branching Processes, pp. 177–217, 1978) for branching diffusions. Keywords Hunt processes · Branching Hunt processes · Kesten–Stigum theorem · Martingales · Martingale change of measure Mathematics Subject Classification (2000) Primary 60J80 · 60F15 · Secondary 60J25 1 Introduction Suppose that {Zn; n ≥ 1} is a Galton–Watson process with each particle having prob- ability pn of giving birth to n offspring. Let L stand for a random variable with this := ∞ offspring distribution. Let m n=1 npn be the mean number of offspring per par- n n ticle. Then Zn/m is a non-negative martingale. Let W be the limit of Zn/m as The research of Y.-X. Ren was supported by NSFC (Grant No. 10871103 and 10971003). R.-L. Liu · Y.-X. Ren LMAM School of Mathematical Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, P.R. China R.-L. Liu e-mail:
[email protected] Y.-X. Ren e-mail:
[email protected] R. Song () Department of Mathematics, The University of Illinois, Urbana, IL 61801, USA e-mail:
[email protected] J Theor Probab (2011) 24: 170–193 171 n →∞.