Multivariate regular variation of preferential attachment models

Abstract We use the framework of multivariate regular variation to analyse the extremal behaviour of preferential attachment models. To this end, we follow a directed linear preferential attachment model for a random, heavy-tailed number of steps in time and treat the incoming edge count of all existing nodes as a random vector of random length. By combining martingale properties, moment bounds and a Breiman type theorem we show that the resulting quantity is multivariate regularly varying, both as a vector of fixed length formed by the edge counts of a finite number of oldest nodes, and also as a vector of random length viewed in sequence space. A Pólya urn representation allows us to explicitly describe the extremal dependence between the degrees with the help of Dirichlet distributions. As a by-product of our analysis we establish new results for almost sure convergence of the edge counts in sequence space as the number of nodes goes to infinity.