Here , , and the upward step is either a birth or immigration, the latter having conditional probability . At zero immigration occurs with probability one. Put , and . The stationary weights of a reflected birth-death chain are
Their successive ratio tends to , so they are summable for . For , makes the weights strictly increasing, ruling out a stationary distribution. Thus positive recurrence holds exactly for . In that case the binomial series gives , and
Every step reverses parity and a two-step return has positive probability, so the period of a state in a Markov chain is two. Starting at zero, , whereas .

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