A spectral decomposition for the Bolthausen-Sznitman coalescent and the kingman coalescent

Abstract

We consider both the Bolthausen-Sznitman and the Kingman coalescent restricted to the partitions of {1,…, n}. Spectral decompositions of the corresponding generators are derived. As an application we obtain a formula for the Green's functions and a short derivation of the well-known formula for the transition probabilities of the Bolthausen-Sznitman coalescent.