Consider a discrete-time one-dimensional supercritical branching random walk. We study the probability that there exists an infinite ray in the branching random walk that always lies above the line of slope $gamma-epsilon$, where $gamma$ denotes the
asymptotic speed of the right-most position in the branching random walk. Under mild general assumptions upon the distribution of the branching random walk, we prove that when $epsilonto 0$, the probability in question decays like $exp{- {beta + o(1)over epsilon^{1/2}}}$, where $beta$ is a positive constant depending on the distribution of the branching random walk. In the special case of i.i.d. Bernoulli$(p)$ random variables (with $0<p<{1over 2}$) assigned on a rooted binary tree, this answers an open question of Robin Pemantle.
We consider branching random walks in $d$-dimensional integer lattice with time-space i.i.d. offspring distributions. This model is known to exhibit a phase transition: If $d ge 3$ and the environment is not too random, then, the total population gro
ws as fast as its expectation with strictly positive probability. If,on the other hand, $d le 2$, or the environment is ``random enough, then the total population grows strictly slower than its expectation almost surely. We show the equivalence between the slow population growth and a natural localization property in terms of replica overlap. We also prove a certain stronger localization property, whenever the total population grows strictly slower than its expectation almost surely.
