The Strong Law of Large Numbers and the Entropy Ergodic Theorem for Nonhomogeneous Bifurcating Markov Chains Indexed by a Binary Tree

Guyon (Guyon J. Limit theorems for bifurcating Markov chains. Application to the detection of cellular aging. Ann Appl Probab, 2007, 17: 1538-1569) introduced an important model for homogeneous bifurcating Markov chains indexed by a binary tree taking values in general state space and studied their limit theorems. The results were applied to detect cellular aging. In this paper, we define a discrete form of nonhomogeneous bifurcating Markov chains indexed by a binary tree and discuss the equivalent properties for them. The strong law of large numbers and the entropy ergodic theorem are studied for these Markov chains with finite state space. In contrast to previous work, we use a new approach to prove the main results of this paper.