Stable random fields indexed by finitely generated free groups.

In this work, we investigate the extremal behaviour of left-stationary symmetric .-stable (S.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.S random fields indexed by Zd. 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 Zd. 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.