Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2005 iii Paper 12 5 c Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
The necessary and sufficient condition iswhere is the spectral radius of the nonnegative matrix. No irreducibility is required. We use the given nonnegative-vector characterization of its Perron eigenvalue.
For necessity, suppose is the survival fixed point and let . Since for every , its equation gives for every . There are finitely many such coordinates, soOutside the inequality still holds, because its right side is zero and its left side is nonnegative. The provided Perron–Frobenius theorem characterization therefore gives . In particular survival is impossible at for this Poisson offspring law.
Conversely suppose . The given characterization supplies a nonzero with ; normalize it so . For sufficiently small ,For example any works. Coordinates with satisfy the inequality automatically. Starting at , iterate . Monotonicity makes the sequence increase, and takes nonnegative vectors into , so it converges to a fixed point . Part (a) gives , proving survival from at least one type. This proves the spectral survival criterion for multitype Poisson branching for reducible as well as irreducible reproduction matrices.