PARTICLE SYSTEMS REPRESENTATION FOR LAMBDA-COALESCENTS
Julien Berestycki, Nathanaël Berestycki and Vlada Limic
We describe a new general connection between
Λ-coalescents and genealogies of continuous-state branching processes.
This connection is based on the construction of an explicit coupling using a particle representation inspired by the lookdown process of Donnelly and Kurtz. This coupling has the property that the coalescent comes down from infinity if and only if the branching process becomes extinct, thereby answering a question of Bertoin and Le Gall.
The coupling also offers new perspective on the speed of coming down from infinity, and allows us to relate power-law behavior for the number of blocks to the classical upper and lower indices arising in the study of pathwise properties of Lévy processes.