Malliavin differentiability of solutions of rough differential equations

In this paper we study rough differential equations driven by Gaussian rough paths from the viewpoint of Malliavin calculus. Under mild assumptions on coefficient vector fields and underlying Gaussian processes, we prove that solutions at a fixed time are smooth in the sense of Malliavin calculus. Examples of Gaussian processes include fractional Brownian motion with Hurst parameter larger than 1/4.     

Linear stochastic differential equations and Wick products

Summary We establish the existence and uniqueness of the solution to a multidimensional linear Skorohod stochastic differential equation with deterministic diffusion matrix, using the notions of Wick product andStransform. If the diffusion matrix is constant and has real eigenvalues, the solution is a stochastic process with moments of all orders, provided that the initial condition is differentiable up to a suitable order. The case of a diffusion matrix in the first Wiener chaos is discussed in the last section.Supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeninschaft/Heisenberg ProgrammSupported by the DGICYT grant PB 90-0452     

Quasi sure analysis and Stratonovich anticipative stochastic differential equations

Summary Consider a stochastic differential equation on ^d with smooth and bounded coefficients. We apply the techniques of the quasi-sure analysis to show that this equation can be solved pathwise out of a slim set. Furthermore, we can restrict the equation to the level sets of a nondegenerate and smooth random variable, and this provides a method to construct the solution to an anticipating stochastic differential equation with smooth and nondegenerate initial condition.     

Error expansion for the discretization of backward stochastic differential equations

We study the error induced by the time discretization of decoupled forward–backward stochastic differential equations (X,Y,Z)$(X,Y,Z)$. The forward component X$X$ is the solution of a Brownian stochastic differential equation and is approximated by a Euler scheme X^N$X^N$ with N$N$ time steps. The backward component is approximated by a backward scheme. Firstly, we prove that the errors (Y^N−Y,Z^N−Z)$(Y^N-Y,Z^N-Z)$ measured in the strong _Lp$L_p$-sense (p≥1$p\ge 1$) are of order N^−1/2$N^{-1/2}$ (this generalizes the results by Zhang [J. Zhang, A numerical scheme for BSDEs, The Annals of Applied Probability 14 (1) (2004) 459–488]). Secondly, an error expansion is derived: surprisingly, the first term is proportional to X^N−X$X^N-X$ while residual terms are of order N⁻¹$N^{-1}$.     

Almost sure explosion of solutions to stochastic differential equations

This paper is concerned with the problem of explosive solutions for a class of stochastic differential equations. Our main results are presented as two theorems. Theorem 1 is concerned with the existence of explosive solutions with positive probability under certain sufficient conditions. With some additional mild conditions, it is shown in Theorem 2 that the explosion will occur almost surely. The methods of auxiliary functions and cycles are used in the proofs. Several remarks about their applications are given.     

Approximation of stationary solutions of Gaussian driven stochastic differential equations

We study sequences of empirical measures of Euler schemes associated to some non-Markovian SDEs: SDEs driven by Gaussian processes with stationary increments. We obtain the functional convergence of this sequence to a stationary solution to the SDE. Then, we end the paper by some specific properties of this stationary solution. We show that, in contrast to Markovian SDEs, its initial random value and the driving Gaussian process are always dependent. However, under an integral representation assumption, we also obtain that the past of the solution is independent of the future of the underlying innovation process of the Gaussian driving process.     

The law of the Euler scheme for stochastic differential equations

Summary We study the approximation problem ofE f(X _T ) byE f(X _T ⁿ ), where (X _t ) is the solution of a stochastic differential equation, (X _T ⁿ ) is defined by the Euler discretization scheme with stepT/n, andf is a given function. For smoothf's, Talay and Tubaro have shown that the errorE f(X _T ) –f(X _T ⁿ ) can be expanded in powers of 1/n, which permits to construct Romberg extrapolation precedures to accelerate the convergence rate. Here, we prove that the expansion exists also whenf is only supposed measurable and bounded, under an additional nondegeneracy condition of Hörmander type for the infinitesimal generator of (X _t ): to obtain this result, we use the stochastic variations calculus. In the second part of this work, we will consider the density of the law ofX _T ⁿ and compare it to the density of the law ofX _T .     

On solutions to backward stochastic partial differential equations for Lévy processes

In this paper, we prove the existence and uniqueness of the solution for a class of backward stochastic partial differential equations (BSPDEs, for short) driven by the Teugels martingales associated with a Lévy process satisfying some moment conditions and by an independent Brownian motion. An example is given to illustrate the theory.     

Central limit theorems for multiple stochastic integrals and Malliavin calculus

We give a new characterization for the convergence in distribution to a standard normal law of a sequence of multiple stochastic integrals of a fixed order with variance one, in terms of the Malliavin derivatives of the sequence. We also give a new proof of the main theorem in [D. Nualart, G. Peccati, Central limit theorems for sequences of multiple stochastic integrals, Ann. Probab. 33 (2005) 177–193] using techniques of Malliavin calculus. Finally, we extend our result to the multidimensional case and prove a weak convergence result for a sequence of square integrable random vectors, giving an application.     

Successive approximations of solutions to stochastic functional differential equations

In the present paper, by means of the successive approximations method, the local or global existence and uniqueness theorems for a stochastic functional differential equation of the Ito type are proved.     

An application of Taylor series in the approximation of solutions to stochastic differential equations with time-dependent delay

The subject of this paper is the analytic approximation method for solving stochastic differential equations with time-dependent delay. Approximate equations are defined on equidistant partitions of the time interval, and their coefficients are Taylor approximations of the coefficients of the initial equation. It will be shown, without making any restrictive assumption for the delay function, that the approximate solutions converge in L^p-norm and with probability 1 to the solution of the initial equation. Also, the rate of the L^p convergence increases when the degrees in the Taylor approximations increase, analogously to what is found in real analysis. At the end, a procedure will be presented which allows the application of this method, with the assumption of continuity of the delay function.     

Mean-field backward stochastic differential equations and related partial differential equations

In [R. Buckdahn, B. Djehiche, J. Li, S. Peng, Mean-field backward stochastic differential equations. A limit approach. Ann. Probab. (2007) (in press). Available online: http://www.imstat.org/aop/future_papers.htm] the authors obtained mean-field Backward Stochastic Differential Equations (BSDE) associated with a mean-field Stochastic Differential Equation (SDE) in a natural way as a limit of a high dimensional system of forward and backward SDEs, corresponding to a large number of “particles” (or “agents”). The objective of the present paper is to deepen the investigation of such mean-field BSDEs by studying them in a more general framework, with general coefficient, and to discuss comparison results for them. In a second step we are interested in Partial Differential Equations (PDE) whose solutions can be stochastically interpreted in terms of mean-field BSDEs. For this we study a mean-field BSDE in a Markovian framework, associated with a McKean–Vlasov forward equation. By combining classical BSDE methods, in particular that of “backward semigroups” introduced by Peng [S. Peng, J. Yan, S. Peng, S. Fang, L. Wu (Eds.), in: BSDE and Stochastic Optimizations; Topics in Stochastic Analysis, Science Press, Beijing (1997) (Chapter 2) (in Chinese)], with specific arguments for mean-field BSDEs, we prove that this mean-field BSDE gives the viscosity solution of a nonlocal PDE. The uniqueness of this viscosity solution is obtained for the space of continuous functions with polynomial growth. With the help of an example it is shown that for the nonlocal PDEs associated with mean-field BSDEs one cannot expect to have uniqueness in a larger space of continuous functions.     

The behavior of solutions of stochastic differential inequalities

Summary LetX andZ be ^d -valued solutions of the stochastic differential inequalities dX _t a(t,X _t )dt+(t,X _t )dW _t andb(t, Z _t )dt+(t, Z _t )dW _t dZ _t , respectively, with a fixed ^m -valued Wiener processW. In this paper we give conditions ona, b and under which the relationX ₀Z ₀ of the initial values leads to the same relation between the solutions with probability one. Further we discuss whether in general our conditions can be weakened or not. Then we deal with notions like maximal/minimal solution of a stochastic differential inequality. Using the comparison result we derive a sufficient condition for the existence of such solutions as well as some Gronwall-type estimates.     

The Ornstein-Uhlenbeck Equation and a Related Malliavin Calculus

We consider two different Brownian motions, B and B ^a ; each of them produces a Wiener-It? chaos representation and therefore it defines a Malliavin derivative, D and D ^a , and a Skorohod integral, δ and δ ^a , respectively. Our aim is to rewrite the differential operators D ^a and δ ^a in terms of D and δ.     

Linear forward-backward stochastic differential equations with random coefficients

Solvability of linear forward-backward stochastic differential equations (FBSDEs, for short) with random coefficients is studied. A decoupling reduction method is introduced via which a large class of linear FBSDEs with random or deterministic time-varying coefficients is proved to be solvable. On the other hand, by means of Four Step Scheme, a Riccati backward stochastic equation (BSDE, for short) for (m×n) matrix-valued processes is derived. Global solvability of such Riccati BSDEs is discussed for some special (but nontrivial) cases, which leads to the solvability of the corresponding linear FBSDEs. This work is supported in part by the NSFC, under grant 10131030, the Chinese Education Ministry Science Foundation under grant 2000024605, the Cheung Kong Scholars Programme, and Shanghai Commission of Science and Technology under grant 02DJ14063.     

Strong p-completeness of stochastic differential equations and the existence of smooth flows on noncompact manifolds

Summary Here we discuss the regularity of solutions of SDE's and obtain conditions under which a SDE on a complete Riemannian manifoldM has a global smooth solution flow, in particular improving the usual global Lipschitz hypothesis whenM=R ⁿ . There are also results on non-explosion of diffusions.Research supported by SERC grant GR/H67263     

Second order backward stochastic differential equations with quadratic growth

We extend the well posedness results for second order backward stochastic differential equations introduced by Soner, Touzi and Zhang (2012)  [31] to the case of a bounded terminal condition and a generator with quadratic growth in the z$z$ variable. More precisely, we obtain uniqueness through a representation of the solution inspired by stochastic control theory, and we obtain two existence results using two different methods. In particular, we obtain the existence of the simplest purely quadratic 2BSDEs through the classical exponential change, which allows us to introduce a quasi-sure version of the entropic risk measure. As an application, we also study robust risk-sensitive control problems. Finally, we prove a Feynman–Kac formula and a probabilistic representation for fully non-linear PDEs in this setting.     

Absolute continuity of the laws of a multi-dimensional stochastic differential equation with coefficients dependent on the maximum

In this article, we consider an m$m$-dimensional stochastic differential equation with coefficients which depend on the maximum of the solution. First, we prove the absolute continuity of the law of the solution. Then we prove that the joint law of the maximum of the i$i$th component of the solution and the i^′$i^{\prime }$th component of the solution is absolutely continuous with respect to the Lebesgue measure in a particular case. The main tool to prove the absolute continuity of the laws is Malliavin calculus.     

Stationary backward stochastic differential equations and associated partial differential equations

By replacing the final condition for backward stochastic differential equations (in short: BSDEs) by a stationarity condition on the solution process we introduce a new class of BSDEs. In a natural manner we associate to such BSDEs the periodic solution of second order partial differential equations with periodic structure. Received: 11 October 1996 / Revised version: 15 February 1999     

The Malliavin calculus

The paper presents a review of the calculus of functional derivatives introduced by Malliaving and the Malliavin technique for establishing the existence of a density for the probability law of Wiener functionals. The approach of Malliavin, Stroock and Shigekawa is compared with that of Bismut.The research was supported by the fund for the promotion of research at the Technion