Existence of non-trivial quasi-stationary distributions in the birth-death chain

We study conditions for the existence of non-trivial quasi-stationary distributions for the birth-and-death chain with 0 as absorbing state. We reduce our problem to a continued fractions one that can be solved by using extensions of classical results of this theory. We also prove that there exist normalized quasi-stationary distributions if and only if 0 is geometrically absorbing.