 Solution

The number present is an M-M-s queue: births occur at rate $\lambda$, deaths at rate $\mu \min (n,s)$. Both rates are bounded, so the chain is nonexplosive. For $\lambda ,\mu >0$ and an integer $s\ge 1$, the detailed-balance weights with ${\pi }_0=1$ areTheir sum is finite precisely when $\lambda <s\mu$, giving positive recurrence and a stationary probability distribution after normalization.

For completeness, the birth–death recurrence criterion is ${\sum }_{n\ge 0}({\lambda }_n{\pi }_n{)}^{-1}=\infty$. It follows by solving the harmonic hitting-probability recurrence: successive differences are proportional to $({\lambda }_n{\pi }_n{)}^{-1}$, and divergence makes the probability of escaping to infinity before reaching zero vanish. The geometric tail of the weights makes this sum diverge when $\lambda \le s\mu$ and converge when $\lambda >s\mu$. Thus $\lambda =s\mu$ gives null recurrence, since the chain is recurrent but has no finite invariant normalization, and $\lambda >s\mu$ gives transience. The critical case is not positive recurrent merely because arrival and maximum service rates balance.