Stable random fields indexed by finitely generated free groups

Abstract

In this work, we investigate the extremal behaviour of left-stationary symmetric $\alpha$-stable (S$\alpha$S) random fields indexed by finitely generated free groups. We begin by studying the rate of growth of a sequence of partial maxima obtained by varying the indexing parameter of the field over balls of increasing size. This leads to a phase-transition that depends on the ergodic properties of the underlying nonsingular action of the free group but is different from what happens in the case of S$\alpha$S random fields indexed by $\mathbb{Z}^{d}$. The presence of this new dichotomy is confirmed by the study of a stable random field induced by the canonical action of the free group on its Furstenberg–Poisson boundary with the measure being Patterson–Sullivan. This field is generated by a conservative action but its maxima sequence grows as fast as the i.i.d. case contrary to what happens in the case of $\mathbb{Z}^{d}$. When the action of the free group is dissipative, we also establish that the scaled extremal point process sequence converges weakly to a novel class of point processes that we have termed as randomly thinned cluster Poisson processes. This limit too is very different from that in the case of a lattice.