Voting models and semilinear parabolic equations

We present probabilistic interpretations of solutions to semi-linear parabolic equations with polynomial nonlinearities in terms of the voting models on the genealogical trees of branching Brownian motion (BBM). These extend the connection between the Fisher-KPP equation and BBM discovered by McKean in~\cite{McK}. In particular, we present random outcome'' and random threshold’’ voting models that yield any polynomial nonlinearity $f$ satisfying $f(0)=f(1)=0$ and a recursive up the tree'' model that allows to go beyond this restriction on $f$. We compute a few examples of particular interest; for example, we obtain a curious interpretation of the heat equation in terms of a nontrivial voting model and a group-based’’ voting rule that leads to a probabilistic view of the pushmi-pullyu transition for a class of nonlinearities introduced by Ebert and van Saarloos.