Spatial birth-and-death processes with a finite number of particles

The aim of this work is to establish essential properties of spatial birth-and-death processes with general birth and death rates on Rd. Spatial birth-and-death processes with time dependent rates are obtained as solutions to certain stochastic equations. The existence, uniqueness, uniqueness in law and the strong Markov property of unique solutions are proven when the integral of the birth rate over Rd grows not faster than linearly with the number of particles of the system. Martingale properties of the constructed process provide a rigorous connection to the heuristic generator. The pathwise behavior of an aggregation model is also studied. The probability of extinction and the growth rate of the number of particles under condition of nonextinction are estimated.