An ergodic theorem for the extremal process of branching Brownian motion

Abstract

In a previous paper, the authors proved a conjecture of Lalley and Sellke that the empirical (time-averaged) distribution function of the maximum of branching Brownian motion converges almost surely to a Gumbel distribution. The result is extended here to the entire system of particles that are extremal, i.e. close to the maximum. Namely, it is proved that the distribution of extremal particles under time-average converges to a Poisson cluster process.