An extended class of time-continuous branching processes

Abstract

This paper is devoted to studying an extended class of time-continuous branching processes, motivated by the study of stochastic control theory and interacting particle systems. The uniqueness, extinction, recurrence and positive recurrence criteria for the processes are presented. The main new point in our proofs is the use of several different comparison methods. The resulting picture shows that the methods are effective and hence should also be meaningful in other situations.