Itô’s stochastic calculus: Its surprising power for applications

We trace Itô’s early work in the 1940s, concerning stochastic integrals, stochastic differential equations (SDEs) and Itô’s formula. Then we study its developments in the 1960s, combining it with martingale theory. Finally, we review a surprising application of Itô’s formula in mathematical finance in the 1970s. Throughout the paper, we treat Itô’s jump SDEs driven by Brownian motions and Poisson random measures, as well as the well-known continuous SDEs driven by Brownian motions.     

Quantum and non-causal stochastic calculus

Summary The quantum stochastic calculus initiated by Hudson and Parthasarathy, and the non-causal stochastic calculus originating with the papers of Hitsuda and Skorohod, are two potent extensions of the Itô calculus, currently enjoying intensive development. The former provides a quantum probabilistic extension of Schrödinger's equation, enabling the construction of a Markov process for a quantum dynamical semigroup. The latter allows the treatment of stochastic differential equations which involve terms which anticipate the future. In this paper the close relationship between these theories is displayed, and a noncausal quantum stochastic calculus, already in demand from physics, is described.     

Stochastic morphological evolution equations

The inadequacy of locally defined set-valued differential equations to describe the evolution of shapes and morphological forms in biology, which are usually neither convex or nondecreasing, was recognised by J.-P. Aubin, who introduced morphological evolution equations, which are essentially nonlocally defined set-valued differential equations with the inclusion vector field also depending on the entire reachable set. This concept is extended here to the stochastic setting of set-valued Itô evolution equations in Hilbert spaces. Due to the nonanticipative nature of Itô calculus, the evolving reachable sets are nonanticipative nonempty closed random sets. The existence of solutions and their dependence on initial data are established. The latter requires the introduction of a time-oriented semi-metric in time-space variables. As a consequence the stochastic morphological evolution equations generate a deterministic nonautonomous dynamical system formulated as a two-parameter semigroup with the complication that the random subsets take values in different spaces at different time instances due to the nonanticipativity requirement. It is also shown how nucleation processes can be handled in this conceptual framework.     

A Series Approach to Stochastic Differential Equations with Infinite Dimensional Noise

This paper considers semilinear stochastic differential equations in Hilbert spaces with Lipschitz nonlinearities and with the noise terms driven by sequences of independent scalar Wiener processes (Brownian motions). The interpretation of such equations requires a stochastic integral. By means of a series of Itô integrals, an elementary and direct construction of a Hilbert space valued stochastic integral with respect to a sequence of independent scalar Wiener processes is given. As an application, existence and strong and weak uniqueness for the stochastic differential equation are shown by exploiting the series construction of the integral.     

Itô's formula in UMD Banach spaces and regularity of solutions of the Zakai equation

Using the theory of stochastic integration for processes with values in a UMD Banach space developed recently by the authors, an Itô formula is proved which is applied to prove the existence of strong solutions for a class of stochastic evolution equations in UMD Banach spaces. The abstract results are applied to prove regularity in space and time of the solutions of the Zakai equation.     

Stochastic integral representation theorem for quantum semimartingales

The quantum stochastic integral of Itô type formulated by Hudson and Parthasarathy is extended to a wider class of adapted quantum stochastic processes on Boson Fock space. An Itô formula is established and a quantum stochastic integral representation theorem is proved for a class of unbounded semimartingales which includes polynomials and (Wick) exponentials of the basic martingales in quantum stochastic calculus.     

Local time–space stochastic calculus for Lévy processes

We develop a stochastic calculus on the plane with respect to the local times of a large class of Lévy processes. We can then extend to these Lévy processes an Itô formula that was established previously for Brownian motion. Our method provides also a multidimensional version of the formula. We show that this formula generates many “Itô formulas” that fit various problems. In the special case of a linear Brownian motion, we recover a recently established Itô formula that involves local times on curves. This formula is already used in financial mathematics.     

Quantum stochastic calculus

An introduction to quantum stochastic calculus in symmetric Fock spaces from the point of view of the theory of stochastic processes. Among the topics discussed are the quantum Itô formula, applications to probability representation of solutions of differential equations, extensions of dynamical semigroups. New algebraic expressions are given for the chronologically ordered exponential functions generated by stochastic semigroups in classical probability theory.Translated from Itogi Nauki i Tekhniki, Seriya Sovremennye Problemy Matematiki, Noveishie Dostizheniya, Vol. 36, pp. 3–28, 1990.     

Stochastic partial differential equations in Hölder spaces

Summary We prove the existence and regularity of solutions to stochastic partial differential equations of parabolic Itô type in Hölder spaces under the usual sublinear growth and local Lipschitz conditions. Some examples are given to which our main theorems apply.The work of the first author was supported in part by the NSF grant DMS-91-01360     

Hyperfinite stochastic integration for Lévy processes with finite-variation jump part

This article links the hyperfinite theory of stochastic integration with respect to certain hyperfinite Lévy processes with the elementary theory of pathwise stochastic integration with respect to pure-jump Lévy processes with finite-variation jump part. Since the hyperfinite Itô integral is also defined pathwise, these results show that hyperfinite stochastic integration provides a pathwise definition of the stochastic integral with respect to Lévy jump-diffusions with finite-variation jump part.As an application, we provide a short and direct nonstandard proof of the generalized Itô formula for stochastic differentials of smooth functions of Lévy jump-diffusions whose jumps are bounded from below in norm.     

Absolute continuity under flows generated by SDE with measurable drift coefficients

We consider the Itô SDE with a non-degenerate diffusion coefficient and a measurable drift coefficient. Under the condition that the gradient of the diffusion coefficient and the divergences of the diffusion and drift coefficients are exponentially integrable with respect to the Gaussian measure, we show that the stochastic flow leaves the reference measure absolutely continuous.     

Split-step forward methods for stochastic differential equations

In this paper we discuss split-step forward methods for solving Itô stochastic differential equations (SDEs). Eight fully explicit methods, the drifting split-step Euler (DRSSE) method, the diffused split-step Euler (DISSE) method and the three-stage Milstein (TSM 1a-TSM 1f) methods, are constructed based on Euler-Maruyama method and Milstein method, respectively, in this paper. Their order of strong convergence is proved. The analysis of stability shows that the mean-square stability properties of the methods derived in this paper are improved on the original methods. The numerical results show the effectiveness of these methods in the pathwise approximation of Itô SDEs.     

Stochastic integration for Lévy processes with values in Banach spaces

A stochastic integral of Banach space valued deterministic functions with respect to Banach space valued Lévy processes is defined. There are no conditions on the Banach spaces or on the Lévy processes. The integral is defined analogously to the Pettis integral. The integrability of a function is characterized by means of a radonifying property of an integral operator associated with the integrand. The integral is used to prove a Lévy–Itô decomposition for Banach space valued Lévy processes and to study existence and uniqueness of solutions of stochastic Cauchy problems driven by Lévy processes.     

Itô type measure-valued stochastic differential equations

A class of Itô type measure-valued stochastic differential equations is studied on a locally compact Polish space. The SDEs are driven by countably many Brownian motions with interactions caused by the diffusion and the drift coefficients through countably many continuous functions. Explicit conditions are presented for the existence, uniqueness and ergodicity of the solution.     

Multi-dimensional G-Brownian motion and related stochastic calculus under G-expectation

We develop a notion of nonlinear expectation–G$G$-expectation–generated by a nonlinear heat equation with infinitesimal generator G$G$. We first study multi-dimensional G$G$-normal distributions. With this nonlinear distribution we can introduce our G$G$-expectation under which the canonical process is a multi-dimensional G$G$-Brownian motion. We then establish the related stochastic calculus, especially stochastic integrals of Itô’s type with respect to our G$G$-Brownian motion, and derive the related Itô’s formula. We have also obtained the existence and uniqueness of stochastic differential equations under our G$G$-expectation.     

Stability of infinite dimensional stochastic evolution equations with memory and Markovian jumps

A strong solutions approximation approach for mild solutions of stochastic functional differential equations with Markovian switching driven by Lévy martingales in Hilbert spaces is considered. The Razumikhin–Lyapunov type function methods and comparison principles are studied in pursuit of sufficient conditions for the moment exponential stability and almost sure exponential stability of equations in which we are interested. The results of [A.V. Svishchuk, Yu.I. Kazmerchuk, Stability of stochastic delay equations of Itô form with jumps and Markovian switchings, and their applications in finance, Theor. Probab. Math. Statist. 64 (2002) 167–178] are generalized and improved as a special case of our theory.     

Estimates for the density of functionals of SDEs with irregular drift

We obtain upper and lower bounds for the density of a functional of a diffusion whose drift is bounded and measurable. The argument consists of using Girsanov’s theorem together with an Itô–Taylor expansion of the change of measure. One then applies Malliavin calculus techniques in a non-trivial manner so as to avoid the irregularity of the drift. An integration by parts formula for this set-up is obtained.     

Some properties of the Itô–Wiener expansion of the solution of a stochastic differential equation and local times

In this paper, we use the formula for the Itô–Wiener expansion of the solution of the stochastic differential equation proven by Krylov and Veretennikov to obtain several results concerning some properties of this expansion. Our main goal is to study the Itô–Wiener expansion of the local time at the fixed point for the solution of the stochastic differential equation in the multidimensional case (when standard local time does not exist even for Brownian motion). We show that under some conditions the renormalized local time exists in the functional space defined by the _L2$L_2$-norm of the action of some smoothing operator.     

Wick-stochastic finite element solution of reaction–diffusion problems

Real life reaction–diffusion problems are characterized by their inherent or externally induced uncertainties in the design parameters. This paper presents a finite element solution of reaction–diffusion equations of Wick type. Using the Wick-product properties and the Wiener–Itô chaos expansion, the stochastic variational problem is reformulated to a set of deterministic variational problems. To obtain the chaos coefficients in the corresponding deterministic reaction–diffusion, we implement the usual Galerkin finite element method using standard techniques. Once this representation is computed, the statistics of the numerical solution can be easily evaluated. Computational results are shown for one- and two-dimensional test examples.     

Brownian functionals and applications

Hida's theory of generalized Brownian functionals is surveyed with the applications to: (1) stochastic partial differential equations, (2) Feynman integral, (3) an extension of Itô's lemma, and (4) infinite dimensional Fourier transform.This article is based on the lectures delivered at the Department of Mathematics, University of Texas at Austin during July 6–10, 1981. The author is grateful to the department, especially, Professor Klaus R. Bichteler, for the invitation and the hispitality.Research supported by NSF grant MCS-8100728.