A canonical setting and separating times for continuous local martingales

The notion of a separating time for a pair of measures on a filtered space is helpful for studying problems of (local) absolute continuity and singularity of measures. In this paper, we describe a certain canonical setting for continuous local martingales (abbreviated below as CLMs) and find an explicit form of separating times for CLMs in this setting.     

The asymptotic behaviour of local times and occupation integrals of theN-parameter Wiener process in R d

Summary LetL(x, T),xR ^d ,TR ₊ ^N , be the local time of theN-parameter Wiener processW taking values inR ^d . Even in the distribution valued casedd2N,L can be described in a series representation by means of multiple Wiener-Ito integrals. This setting proves to be a good starting point for the investigation of the asymptotic behaviour ofL(x, T) as |x|0 and/orT and of related occupation integrals asT. We obtain the rates of explosion in laws of the first order, i.e. normalized convergence laws forL(x, T) resp.X _T (f), and of the second order, i.e. normalized convergence laws forL(x, T)–E(L(x, T)) resp.X _T (f)–E(X _T (f)).This research was made during a stay at the LMU in München supported by DAAD     

Smoothness of Brownian local times and related functionals

In this paper we show that the local time of the Brownian motion belongs to the Sobolev space for any p2 and 0<<1/p. In order to prove this result we first discuss the smoothness and integrability properties of the composition of the Dirac function with a Wiener integral W(h), and we show that this composition belongs to , for any >0 and p>1 such that +1/p>1.     

Filtering of a reflected Brownian motion with respect to its local time

We consider a filtering problem when the state process is a reflected Brownian motion _Xt$X_t$ and the observation process is its local time _Λs${\Lambda }_s$, for s≤t$s\le t$. For this model we derive an approximation scheme based on a suitable interpolation of the observation process _Λt${\Lambda }_t$. The convergence of the approximating filter to the original one combined with an explicit construction of the approximating filter allows us to derive the explicit form of the original filter. The last result can be obtained also by means of the Azéma martingale.     

Some zero-one laws for additive functionals of Markov processes

Summary Let (X _t,P ^x ) be anm-symmetric Markov process with a strictly positive transition density. Consider the additive functionalA _t : = ₀ ^t f (X _s ) wheref:E[0, ] is a universally measurable function on the state spaceE. Among others, we prove thatP ^x (A _t <)=1, for somexE and somet>0, already impliesP ^x (A _t <)=1, for quasi everyxE and allt>0. The latter is also equivalent toP ^x (A _t <)>0, for quasi everyxE and allt>0, and to the analytic condition , for a sequence of finely open Borel setsF _n such thatEF _n is polar. In the special cases of Brownian motion and Bessel process, these results were obtained earlier by H.J. Engelbert, W. Schmidt, X.-X. Xue and the authors.     

On permanental processes

Permanental processes can be viewed as a generalization of squared centered Gaussian processes. We analyze the connections of these processes with the local time process of general Markov processes. The obtained results are related to the notion of infinite divisibility.     

An excursion approach to maxima of the Brownian bridge

Distributions of functionals of Brownian bridge arise as limiting distributions in non-parametric statistics. In this paper we will give a derivation of distributions of extrema of the Brownian bridge based on excursion theory for Brownian motion. The idea of rescaling and conditioning on the local time has been used widely in the literature. In this paper it is used to give a unified derivation of a number of known distributions, and a few new ones. Particular cases of calculations include the distribution of the Kolmogorov–Smirnov statistic and the Kuiper statistic.     

Local times of ranked continuous semimartingales

Given a finite collection of continuous semimartingales, we derive a semimartingale decomposition of the corresponding ranked (order-statistics) processes. We apply the decomposition to extend the theory of equity portfolios generated by ranked market weights to the case where the stock values admit triple points.     

Almost sure estimates for the concentration neighborhood of Sinai’s walk

We consider Sinai’s random walk in random environment. We prove that infinitely often (i.o.) the size of the concentration neighborhood of this random walk is bounded almost surely. We also get that i.o. the maximal distance between two favorite sites is bounded almost surely.     

Smoothness of Gaussian local times beyond the local nondeterminism

The joint continuity of Gaussian local times is investigated under conditions strictly weaker than the local nondeterminism. Our conditions are given in terms of the interpolation variances only and they cover the class of Gaussian Markov processes. A new order of infinitesimal in the tail probability of the local time at the origin is obtained.     

Approximation via regularization of the local time of semimartingales and Brownian motion

Through a regularization procedure, a few schemes for approximation of the local time of a large class of continuous semimartingales and reversible diffusions are given. The convergence holds in the ucp sense. In the case of standard Brownian motion, we have been able to bound the rate of convergence in L²$L^2$, and to establish the a.s. convergence of some of our schemes.     

The Skorokhod problem in a time-dependent interval

We consider the Skorokhod problem in a time-varying interval. We prove existence and uniqueness of the solution. We also express the solution in terms of an explicit formula. Moving boundaries may generate singularities when they touch. Under the assumption that the first time τ$\tau$ when the moving boundaries touch after time zero is strictly positive, we derive two sets of conditions on the moving boundaries. We show that the variation of the local time of the associated reflected Brownian motion on [0,τ]$[0,\tau ]$ is finite under the first set of conditions and infinite under the second set of conditions. We also apply these results to study the semimartingale property of a class of two-dimensional reflected Brownian motions.     

Local times on curves and uniform invariance principles

Summary Sufficient conditions are given for a family of local times |L _t ^µ | ofd-dimensional Brownian motion to be jointly continuous as a function oft and . Then invariance principles are given for the weak convergence of local times of lattice valued random walks to the local times of Brownian motion, uniformly over a large family of measures. Applications included some new results for intersection local times for Brownian motions on ² and ².Research partially supported by NSF grant DMS-8822053     

Poisson point processes,excursions and stable processes in two-dimensional structures

Itô’s contributions lie at the root of stochastic calculus and of the theory of excursions. These ideas are also very useful in the study of conformally invariant two-dimensional structures, via conformal loop ensembles, excursions of Schramm–Loewner evolutions and Poisson point processes of Brownian loops.