Asymptotics of one-dimensional forest fire processes

Abstract

We consider the so-called one-dimensional forest fire process. At each site of Z, a tree appears at rate 1. At each site of Z, a fire starts at rate λ > 0, immediately destroying the whole corresponding connected component of trees. We show that when λ is made to tend to 0 with an appropriate normalization, the forest fire process tends to a uniquely defined process, the dynamics of which we precisely describe. The normalization consists of accelerating time by a factor log(1/λ) and of compressing space by a factor λ log(1/λ). The limit process is quite simple: it can be built using a graphical construction and can be perfectly simulated. Finally, we derive some asymptotic estimates (when λ → 0) for the cluster-size distribution of the forest fire process. © Institute of Mathematical Statistics, 2010.