Poisson representations for tree-indexed Markov chains

Abstract

In~\cite{fgs}, the class of Poisson representable processes was introduced. Several well-known processes were shown not to belong to this class, with examples including both the Curie Weiss model and the Ising model on $ \mathbb{Z}^2 $ for certain choices of parameters. Curiously, it was also shown that all positively associated $ \{ 0,1 \}$-valued Markov chains do belong to this class. In this paper, we interpolate between Markov chains and Ising models by considering tree-indexed Markov chains. In particular, we show that for any finite tree that is not a path, whether or not the corresponding tree-indexed Markov chain is representable always depends on the parameters. Moreover, we give an example of a family of infinite trees such that the corresponding tree-indexed Markov chains are representable for some non-trivial parameters. In addition, we give alternative proofs and arguments and also strengthen several of the results in~\cite{fgs}.