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Extinction Times for Birth-Death Processes: Exact Results, Continuum Asymptotics, and the Failure of the Fokker--Planck Approximation

Extinction Times for Birth-Death Processes: Exact Results, Continuum Asymptotics, and the Failure of the Fokker--Planck Approximation

We consider extinction times for a class of birth-death processes commonly found in applications, where there is a control parameter which defines a threshold. Below the threshold, the population quickly becomes extinct; above, it persists for a long time. We give an exact expression for the mean time to extinction …