Immigration processes associated with branching particle systems

The immigration processes associated with a given branching particle system are formulated by skew convolution semigroups. It is shown that every skew convolution semigroup corresponds uniquely to a locally integrable entrance law for the branching particle system. The immigration particle system may be constructed using a Poisson random measure based on a Markovian measure determined by the entrance law. In the special case where the underlying process is a minimal Brownian motion in a bounded domain, a general representation is given for locally integrable entrance laws for the branching particle system. The convergence of immigration particle systems to measure-valued immigration processes is also studied.